


The Way Home

by dreamlittleyo



Series: The Way Home [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sibling Incest, Wincest - Freeform, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Wordcount: Over 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:11:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/pseuds/dreamlittleyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when two loners start working together and find themselves in a world that just might be ending?<br/></p><div class="center">
<br/><img/></div>
            </blockquote>





	The Way Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vinylroad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinylroad/gifts).



The night John learns about Stanford is ugly.

He and Sam nearly come to blows. It's the biggest fight John can remember having with his youngest, and that's saying something. There's bellowing, ultimatums and the deafening pulse of terror in John's ears as he tells his son to get out and stay gone.

It's not what he means to say.

The worst part is the look on Dean's face when Sam finally storms out. John tries not to see it, but it's stark and unavoidable—burns right onto his retinas. His son's eyes reflect shattered loss, like his whole goddamn world just walked out the door with his baby brother, and John realizes he can't let things stand like this.

Which doesn't mean he's got any idea how to fix it.

Instead of looking Dean in the eye, John follows Sam into the night.

The trail is already cold. No one hides like a Winchester when he doesn't want to be found.

   
 

John comes home hours later. It's two a.m. and he hasn't been drinking—there's nothing in his system but uncomfortable thoughts and desperation. He treads softly in the kitchen, not that he has any delusions that his eldest is asleep.

He stops short when Sam emerges through a door on the wrong side of the hallway. Dean's room, and the latch clicks softly as Sam pulls it shut behind him. They both freeze where they stand, trapped in shadowed silhouette that leaves them struggling to read each other.

By some unspoken, mutual decision they both return to the kitchen, but even in the dim lamplight John can't read his son. It's impossible to see anything past the bowed head and the concealing fringe of bangs that he's let grow for months too long.

"Sam," John says carefully. Not 'Sammy.' Not for this conversation. "Those things I said earlier… I don't want you to think—"

"It's okay," Sam cuts him off, and his voice is every bit as quiet and careful as John's.

"No," says John. "It isn't." Because he's going to apologize. He's not going to let his pride and his fear and the startled ache in his chest make him drive his baby boy away.

"Look, I get it," says Sam. Something in his tone hints that maybe he really does, but John still feels like he's floundering. He still can't see Sam's face.

"Stanford's… a long ways away," he says.

"I'm not going."

The words are backwards, and John must have misheard them. Otherwise, why were they fighting? Why are they standing here treading so goddamn lightly? He starts running through exorcisms in his head and doesn't stop until Sam finally, _finally_ meets his eyes.

John isn't sure what expression he expects to find on Sam's face, but this soft contentment isn't it. His halfcocked theories fly out the window—no more wondering if Sam is possessed or Dean somehow guilted his brother into staying.

That's not guilt shining in Sam's eyes.

"Are you sure?" John asks, because even though the shadow of fear is retreating, Sam's words are too good to be true.

"Yeah." Sam nods like he's reaffirming it to himself.

When his son leaves the kitchen for bed, John stands leaning against the counter and stares after him, dumbfounded.

   
 

Three years later his boys are itching for a hunt of their own. Practically begging him to let them go off without him, all conspiratorial glances and brick-subtle hints.

For Dean's birthday that year—John always remembers it, even if it goes uncelebrated more often than not—John gives him the Impala.

The new truck he buys feels wrong. So does the hunt he hands his sons, even if it _is_ as close to a cakewalk as hunting ever comes—but he knows his boys are chafing for a little freedom. For something they can take on themselves. And there are things he's been meaning to look into—things it would be easier to check out alone.

So he braces himself for the inevitable anxiety of sending his boys off without him, and uses the time to stop at Bobby's and borrow some books.

A year later, when his sons are working without him more often than not, John realizes this must be what an empty nest feels like.

The revelation throws him off his game, and he walks into a hunt in Yolo County, California, a little less prepared than he ought to be. It should be an easy job of digging and igniting, and it _would_ be if he had backup.

But he's on his own. He sends the spirit—a crushed little boy who breaks his heart—on its way in flames and lets his guard down because the hunt is over.

When the boy's mother materializes behind him, he doesn't see it coming. His shotgun is out of reach.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

Jo is five when her daddy first starts teaching her about knives. Her fingers are tiny and careful, and Bill Harvelle is all gentle finesse under his wife's watchful eyes. He shows Jo with his own hands and his own skin just how easy it is to bleed, and she holds the lesson sacred.

The world is one lesson after another as she grows up, some of them more painful than others. There are always hunters around, and they tell her stories in hushed, warning tones. Some of them she calls 'uncle' while hanging on their every word. Some of them she keeps at a careful distance because her momma clearly doesn't trust them.

All of them turn up bleeding and broken now and then. By the time she's twelve, Jo knows a dozen different stitches and how to treat a concussion. At fifteen, she can set bones and relocate shoulders. But by then her dad's been dead five years, and that's the most painful lesson of all.

She sees him sometimes, in the eyes of the other hunters as she patches them up. When the battle goes well and the innocents are saved, she sees the bright, driven fire that she remembers. Staggering clarity, that memory, from every time her daddy came home alive and scooped her up into his arms.

The world of monsters is dangerous, but it doesn't stop Jo wanting in.

   
 

High school is a struggle, and she barely gets the grades to graduate. It's not that it's too hard or she isn't smart enough. School just feels like a waste of time in the face of what she knows, especially when she feels with a strange certainty that her path is leading somewhere else entirely.

College funding could pose a problem, but in the end it doesn't. Once she's enrolled, her tuition gets magically paid up in full. They never do figure out who did it, but there's a whole list of suspect 'uncles' they could blame.

She gives college a genuine try, even though it feels like the futility of high school all over again. She owes it to her mom, and to her anonymous benefactor, and she _tries_. Attends classes, joins study groups, makes friends and goes to parties like a normal girl.

But there's no escaping the sensation that she's living a convenient lie. None of her friends and classmates have any idea what's out there. None of them _want_ to know, and Jo can't help feeling trapped and useless. When her freshman year roommate stumbles onto her weapons stash, that's the end of 'normal'.

The weapons stay where they are; apparently nobody bothers to rat her out to the hall director. But no one in the entire dorm will talk to her after that.

She moves off campus the next semester, into an apartment two blocks down from the science building, and from there she toughs it out until her junior year. She chooses a major in biology, a minor in chemistry; because those are the only two subjects she can stand. She's not much for lab procedure, but the information is practical. Tangible. Stuff you could use to save someone's life.

A month before Jo's twenty-first birthday, students start dying vicious deaths. Authorities suspect a serial killer has staked out the neighborhood, but Jo knows better. She's read the police reports, and there are only a handful of creatures that go for the heart. She starts carrying her largest knife—the silver one—and even though she thinks about calling in reinforcements, in the end she takes the monster out herself. Just her and her blade, her first time getting too damn close to a werewolf's teeth.

She drops out of school the next day and hops a bus all the way home, just as soon as she tells her landlord she's breaking lease. She leaves him with an extra month's rent, even though he's a softie and would've let her get away with it in a heartbeat.

Ellen is furious, which in itself isn't a surprise. Since before she learned to drive, Jo remembers fighting with her mom about school; about the future and how a world full of monsters is no way to live.

"There's more out there for you!" Ellen yells. "You could get away from all this. You could be _safe_."

Jo almost doesn't have the heart to tell her about the werewolf.

   
 

She's at the Roadhouse all of two months before the itch under her skin is too much and she realizes she can't do this anymore. Sitting on the sidelines, watching people come and go with their stories; their battle scars and their bruises. She needs to be out there.

Trapped here she feels useless. Busing tables and filling drink orders when people are _dying_ because they don't know what's waiting in the shadows.

Ellen doesn't want to hear it. She seems even more dead-set now than before Jo dropped out of college, but Jo's not waiting on her mom's permission anymore.

It's the biggest fight they've ever had. It starts at "Don't get smart with me, Joanna Beth," and ends with more than one ultimatum.

Jo is already packed. Premonition or destiny, or maybe it's just good planning. Everything she needs fits in two duffels and a rucksack, and they're all she takes the time for. She slings them over her shoulders as she walks out of the Roadhouse.

There's a hunt just three counties over. She's got money in a bank account with just her name on it and a bus ticket in her back pocket.

Jo thinks about turning back half a dozen times as she heads on foot down the dusty road to town. Thinks about it, and just keeps walking.

   
 

Her first hunt goes well; her second poorly. By the third she's got a system. She's good at research, looks harmless enough to get information from _anyone_ , and years tending bar have left her well equipped with an easy, sympathetic face.

When she's well enough prepared, she finds that hunts go pretty smoothly. She's good at finding the hunts she can take on solo, and she passes along anything likely to get her killed. Sometimes she crosses paths with other hunters, learns she plays well with others; but after the hunt she always goes her separate way. Back to her own motel, knives to sharpen and guns to clean. Sometimes to a bar if she's got a lonely sort of itch to scratch, but the solitary travel from state to state only bothers her when she thinks about it.

She's running low on funds when she hits Yolo County, and it looks like time to bus some tables or hustle some pool. But there's a job first. It looks like one ghost at first, but it can't be. The pattern doesn't quite fit. The little boy has an M.O.; he crushes people to death. There are half a dozen outliers in ten years, and that doesn't track.

Figures it's the mom. Everyone believed the man when he said his wife left town. Said she couldn't deal with their loss. He never mentioned to anyone that she died trying to find their baby.

The basement smells rank and moist, dark beyond the piercing beam of Jo's flashlight. The air isn't silent like it should be.

She rounds a corner and sees the mother first. Flickering staticky and translucent and edged with an eerie glow. Her dress is in tatters, her hair a withered mess, and Jo grasps the hilt of her knife a little tighter.

It's only as she approaches, one careful step at a time, that Jo sees the man choking in the ghost's hands. His face is distorted with trying to breathe, but something about him is familiar.

"Hey!" she yells, and it gets her all the attention she wants. The ghost drops her prey and whirls, flies at Jo blindingly fast. Jo moves with the attack, steps back and away to give herself a couple extra feet to maneuver, and stabs the woman with the blade of her knife.

Solid iron.

By the time she reaches the man's side he's already on his feet, coughing but steady.

"Where's the body?" he asks, like he expects Jo to know the answer. Fortunately, she's pretty sure she does. The mother is buried under one of the towering oaks out back, if Jo's research has pointed her right.

Finding the remains is quick work between the two of them. The man leads with a shotgun, and at first Jo wonders if she's picked up a useless crazy. But the ghost reappears while they're digging, and a shotgun blast vaporizes her approach. Special shells, maybe, but she'll will wonder about that later. After she finds her lighter and finishes this.

Salt and flame, nothing but the ghost's inhuman shriek for accompaniment, and the yard finally falls silent. Jo wipes sweaty bangs aside and tucks them behind her ears.

She turns to look at her unexpected partner in crime and catches him studying her, a look in his eyes that say he's on her trail and closing in, waiting on that last hint of recognition.

"Hey," she says when she finally catches her breath. "You can say thank you with a burger and fries. Maybe a beer if you're _really_ grateful."

"Sure," he says, and starts packing up his gear.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

The bar is heavy with noise and smoke, dim and busy. Two cheeseburgers, nothing fancy, and a couple of pints to follow through. It's not something he recognizes. Just a local brew, whatever's on tap.

John watches in amazement as the girl tucks away every bite on her plate and moves on to his fries when her own are gone.

He doesn't protest. Even if she hadn't just saved his life, he never finds himself quite hungry after a hunt. Especially the ones he almost doesn't make it out of. Besides, the girl could stand to put some meat on her skinny bones.

They eat in silence at first, but it's not because there's nothing to say. She stumbled onto his hunt—saved his ass. He wants to ask how she knew about that second ghost.

But he's distracted with other things. With the fact that she's disconcertingly familiar. He can't place it, and the dim flicker of the barroom lighting is no help. But the feeling persists, the insistent tickle that tells him he knows this girl.

"This might sound…" ' _Creepy_ '? ' _Inappropriate_ '? ' _Completely nuts_ '? "… odd, but have we met before?" He doesn't want to introduce himself outright. Too much history with the hunting world for _that_ to be a good idea.

Apparently the question's not out of line, because she doesn't look offended. She stares him down, doesn't break eye contact as she steals another French fry. Chews and swallows and never loses the steady, considering expression on her face.

He can tell the moment a decision is reached from a flicker of something behind her eyes. She wipes her fingers on her napkin and extends her right hand across the table in belated greeting.

"Jo Harvelle," she says.

That's every missing piece to the puzzle at once, images and memories falling instantly into place in his head. He pictures her with pigtails—tiny in her mama's arms—and god, has it really been that many years?

"John Winchester," he replies when he shakes her offered hand. Even if giving the girl his real name ends up biting him in the ass, he's got no right telling her otherwise. He owes Bill and Ellen's daughter better than the lies and half truths he offers the rest of the world.

The name sinks in slowly, recognition a gradual slide across her features.

"I remember you," she says, face scrunched like she's still figuring him out. "You used to come around a lot. A long time ago. When my dad was still alive."

John's heart tightens in his chest—a sharp, painful jolt—and he covers it poorly. He takes a swallow of beer to clear those unpleasant memories so he can look her in the eye again.

"Where do you go from here?" he asks. He forces himself to down the last bite of his burger and pushes his plate with remaining fries to the center of the table.

"East." She ignores the offered plate, apparently sated at last. "A couple of obits from Hawthorne don't add up. I was looking into it when I found this hunt."

"You got a car hiding in the bushes somewhere?" he asks, because Hawthorne is close but not _that_ close. Jo looks at him with a stifled little smile, warm amusement at his expense, and shakes her head.

"It's called a bus," she says. And even though a Greyhound is a perfectly respectable way to travel, for some reason John doesn't like the sound of that. He can see it in his head: a sketchy bus station late at night and a pretty girl traveling alone. He knows she's capable, but he still doesn't like it one bit.

It's not his place to comment, so he bites his tongue.

"Or you could give me a ride," she says. Like she's reading his mind, or maybe just the uncomfortable disapproval on his face. "That's a big truck you've got. Plenty of room inside it for me."

She says it with a smile—with a tilt of her head and a shrug of her shoulders—and the relaxed ease isn't a front. She trusts him, and for some reason that terrifies John. He looks in her eyes, and every instinct tells him to run like hell.

He nods instead, and his smile is just a little bit forced. She's alone out here, near as he can tell, and who else does she have to watch her back?

"You been hunting long?" he finally says, breaking the stiff silence.

"Long enough."

"Your mom know what you get up to?" he asks, even though it's none of his business.

Jo's expression closes off a little, but she squares her shoulders and says, "Sure she does."

"She happy about it?"

"What do you think?"

Instead of answering he waves the waiter down and asks for the check.

   
 

"I see how it is," Jo tells him when they hit town the next day. "You just wanted to nose in on my new hunt. Save yourself the research."

He can read the teasing toss of her voice easily enough, knows her words are an invitation. He smiles despite himself as he shifts the truck into neutral.

"What can I say? I've always hated reading obituaries."

It's not true. He reads them with dedicated compulsion, just like anyone else in this messy line of work.

But he's here. It only makes sense to lend a hand digging through libraries and death certificates, the usual drill. They end up at a dark, rickety building that passes for the historical society, and the archive of records is painfully expansive. Apparently no local politician, historian or county employee has ever thrown away a sheet of paper.

They find what they need eventually, and their research puts together coordinates on the shore of Walker Lake. A Reverend Andrew Sagert summoned something unpleasant there a century ago. They're not a hundred percent sure what it is beyond the claws and teeth and excessive slime, but they know fire will kill it.

Their teamwork is a little less than well oiled when they dispatch the thing, but they still get the job done. Jo attacks when she should retreat, caught up in the heat of the moment or maybe it's just the wrong tactical choice; but either way she gets way too close and personal with the creature, and for a second John is sure she's a goner.

He yells at her afterwards; doesn't really mean to make a confrontation out of it, but shouting is his first instinct when he loses control of a situation.

Jo promises that next time she'll follow his orders, but the look in her eyes adds the caveat ' _as long as they're not stupid_.'

It's late when they finally leave town. Later still when they finally pull off the highway at a flashing orange vacancy sign, a stop halfway to nowhere and counting.

There's only one room available, and John expects it to be awkward. Even offers to sleep in his truck. Jo gives him a tired look, one that says it's too late for gentlemanly bullshit, and he's got no recourse but to follow her into the room, kicking the door shut behind him as he steps over the threshold.

There's plenty of space for modesty and decorum, and Jo disappears into the bathroom with one of her bags. She goes to sleep in sweats and a t-shirt.

John's bed is wide and unexpectedly soft, and he dreams the sleep of the almost righteous.

   
 

A week later, there's something John can't put off any longer. Clouds hang sullen overhead, and he's left Jo buried in the stacks of the White Pine County Library. John already promised he'd be back to rescue her in an hour, just a couple errands to run in the meantime.

There aren't really errands; the ammo is stocked, the first aid kit is new, and the credit cards are fake but current. A voicemail from his boys this morning filled him in on the chupacabra they took down in West Texas.

Maybe it's hearing from his boys that reminds him. Once the library is far enough behind him, he pulls his truck over to the curb and digs the cell phone out of his pocket. Dials a number he never planned on using again.

His first call rings out with no answer. He thinks about taking that for a sign, but in the end he has to try again.

Two rings for the second attempt, then a muffled click and a familiar voice says, "Harvelle's Roadhouse."

Her voice hits him harder than it should. This many years and he should have been able to put everything behind him. But it hurts, just like the sight of a little girl who's not so little anymore, and he has to fight away the familiar crush of remembered failure before he can speak.

"Ellen," he says.

Silence after that. The kind of heavy silence that speaks of instant recognition and painful history. It's early in the day. The Roadhouse is probably empty.

"Winchester," she finally says, and her voice isn't the cold wall he halfway expects.

"Sorry to call out of the blue like this." John shifts in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable and feeling restricted in the confines of the truck. "I know it's been awhile."

"Awhile," she repeats, and there's dry humor in the word. "You calling for any particular reason? You better not be bleeding out somewhere."

"No," he says. "No one's bleeding out. I'm… calling because I ran into Jo."

That earns him another silent stretch, a thick pause that he can't quite read and doesn't quite want to.

"She okay?" Ellen asks.

"Yeah. She's great. Cryptic as hell when I asked about you, though. Made me think I should check in."

"Thank you," she says. Quiet. And even through the tinny speaker of his cell phone, John can hear the gratitude in her voice.

"She really is okay," he assures, because if it were one of his boys he would want to hear it again. "Saved my ass, actually, but _please_ don't tell anyone."

She laughs at him, a bright, airy sound that's only a little bit dark around the edges.

"Ellen, what happened?" he asks. Even though it's not his business. He doesn't really expect an answer, and he's surprised as hell when she gives him one with barely a beat dropped between.

"We fought when she left," Ellen admits, and her voice is hard. Of necessity, he supposes. "She won't call. Doesn't matter how many voicemails I leave."

John doesn't ask how she even knew Jo was still alive. Ellen's got her network. Wide enough to put the rest of the hunting world to shame.

"You hunting together?" Ellen asks. The question catches him off guard, and he's not quite sure how to answer. Three hunts and counting has pushed them a little past initial coincidence. John's pretty sure he's not imagining the trepidation in her tone.

"I guess so," he says. It's honest, at least. Even if all it gets him is another painfully long pause.

"You take care of my little girl, Winchester," Ellen finally says. "And you call now and then when she ain't looking."

"I will." It's a promise. She doesn't need to say aloud that if anything happens to Jo on his watch she'll hunt him down.

Later that night, John can't quiet the manic buzz of noise in his head. It makes him edgy, and it makes lying back and closing his eyes a patent impossibility.

He watches Jo sleep instead, and doesn't fight the warm edge of protective instinct as it settles itself deep in his bones.

   
 

Hunting with Jo, John learns quickly that there's no limit to people's misperceptions. Some assume she's his daughter, others his very young girlfriend. Now and then someone gives him a knowing look. Like he's her sleazy sugar daddy, and man, what a catch.

There are times they could play it up and use it to their advantage, but neither of them ever does.

For the most part they interview witnesses separately anyway, different faces for different needs. Jo is good at getting information out of the bereaved and the timid. John's got a knack for scaring the hell out of people. It's not often that both of their particular skills are necessary at the same time.

John's grateful that Jo seems content to follow his lead and ignore people's assumptions. Hell of a lot less awkward that way. He clings to the small mercy like a lifeline, and he steadfastly Does Not Notice when they shift into warmer climates and Jo switches over from her usual sweats to sleeping in shorts too tiny to be decent.

Jo apparently has complete trust in his propriety and disinterest, because they're still checking in to one room every night. It's fortunate, for once, that John is good at focusing on his research to the detriment of the world around him.

He employs the habit like a war tactic, and though their equilibrium is strange, it holds steady.

   
 

John sprains his wrist in Idaho, and even though the discomfort isn't _that_ bad, he caves and lets Jo drive through the worst couple days. It might have been the stubborn glint in her eyes, or maybe the fact that she stuck her sneaky little hand into his jacket pocket and stole his keys when he dropped his guard.

Which factor won her the argument doesn't matter. Just that the end result is John sitting in his own passenger seat as they drive across an uneventful stretch of Idaho highway. The road is thick with orange cones and construction signs every few miles, which slows their pace and makes him edgy.

Jo is a good driver, which leaves him no rational reason for his persistent discomfort. And she looks good behind the wheel of his truck, but John's sure as hell not thinking about that.

The road is flat, the sky gray, and somehow they get to arguing about battle strategy. Par for the course, really, and he rests his injured arm—barely throbbing at all anymore—on the fold-down armrest in the middle of the seat.

"I'm not saying you're bad with firearms. I'm just saying you could be better."

Jo rolls her eyes at him instead of looking pissed. "It's not like I ever really _use_ guns," she points out, reasonable tone undercut by the clear hint that she was done with this topic twelve miles ago.

"You could use them more," he points out. It's the third time he's brought it up, but maybe eventually she'll _hear_ him, or at least take his suggestion to heart.

"You know I like knives better."

"You're great with a blade, girl, but that doesn't always make it the smartest way to fight. The further away you can stay from most of these things the better."

"And rock salt doesn't always do the trick!"

It's exactly the way this discussion has gone every damn time, and it's time to change it up.

This time John says, "Please."

Jo gives him a startled look when he says it, eyes off the road for several beats. She looks back to the highway ahead without speaking.

"Look," he sighs. Drops his head back against the seat. "I don't like it, watching you let things get so damn close. It…" ' _scares the hell out of me_ ,' he thinks. "Makes me nervous," he says.

Jo is silent for another twenty minutes, until finally she says, "I'll get better with the guns."

   
 

It's a new stretch of highway, when later that evening Jo asks him, "Did you ever have a thing for my mom?"

John's got a bottle of soda in his right hand and a mouthful of coke that almost ends up all over his dashboard. He throws her a startled glance and doesn't even try to conceal it, because the casual edge of her voice isn't particularly convincing.

He swallows carefully and coughs to clear his throat. He doesn't want his answer—his _honest_ answer—to come out any way but solid.

"No," he says carefully. He isn't sure if she expects him to elaborate.

The truth of it is, contrary to what the rest of the hunting community might whisper and gossip behind his back, John never had a romantic interest in Ellen Harvelle. He's always been good at not wanting what belongs to someone else, and that includes other people's wives.

But even if it hadn't been for Bill, John's pretty sure nothing would ever have happened between him and Ellen. He was too much hurting when he met her. Too blind to anything but his grief and his boys, with no focus but becoming the best damn hunter he could. He had to keep his children safe.

Ellen was a comrade and an ally. Eventually a friend. She was never more to him than that.

The drab, gray highway is still there when John pulls him from his thoughts, and he might be imagining the easier set to Jo's shoulders.

"Good," she finally says, and he's not sure why it makes his chest tighten.

John Winchester never had a thing for Ellen Harvelle. But that doesn't make it right, the thoughts he sometimes finds himself having about her little girl.

   
 

Certain things are inevitable when it comes to hunting, and the first is that eventually someone gets hurt. Maybe it's a rule of living and not just hunting. But John's not really pondering semantics when Jo gets taken down in Sioux City.

He should count his blessings. It was a werewolf, and it's lucky as hell that it's only the thing's claws doing the damage. Just big, nasty, bloody claws, and John will count blessings _after_ he gets her out of here alive.

He ends the thing quickly, and Jo is out cold when he picks her up. Bleeding too much from the gash down her side, and too damn light in his arms as he carries her back to the truck. It takes too long to get the first aid kit out, but his hands are steady as he stitches her up by the light of the full moon. He remembers she told him once about her first kill, another werewolf. She took it out alone, as much by luck as anything, and John hopes like hell that luck is enough to see her through one more time.

Bobby is close, and even though the man doesn't exactly owe him any favors, John knows he'll let them impose for Jo's sake. They just need to lay low for a couple days. Somewhere safe, where John can keep an eye on the girl and make sure she wakes up.

He drives carefully the whole way, Jo lying folded just so across the front seat on her uninjured side. Her head rests pillowed on John's leg, and he resists the urge to thread his fingers through her hair.

   
 

Bobby takes one look at the ash-pale girl in John's arms and stands aside to let them in. He doesn't mention that it's four a.m., and there's no hint of irritation as he directs John across the house and into the first floor guest room.

"That Ellen's girl?" Bobby asks, quiet even though Jo is too far gone for his voice to wake her. He pulls aside the covers, just a sheet and a fall-apart old comforter.

"Yeah," says John as he carefully deposits his cargo. Gentle. Soft movements, mindful of the stitching along her side. He pulls the covers up to her chin.

"You need anything else?" Bobby asks him, but the man slips out the door when John's only answer is to shake his head roughly.

John doesn't sleep that night. He's too busy watching Jo breathe.

   
 

Jo doesn't open her eyes the next morning, but John knows she'll be okay, already breathing evenly and with something like color back in her cheeks. They'll have to watch for infection, but John's got half a lifetime's worth of antibiotics tucked away for just such a contingency.

Bobby's waiting for him with coffee when he finally steps into the kitchen. John blinks at the bright glint of new sun through the window and accepts the mug with a grateful grunt. He follows Bobby out to the porch, obedience born of gratitude, and leans his weight against the front railing as he takes a blissful sip of bitter caffeine.

"I talked to Caleb a couple weeks back," says Bobby, moving in to lean on the railing beside him. "He said you and the Harvelle girl were hunting together. I thought he was jerkin' my chain."

John shrugs. Takes another sip from his mug, because he's still not sure he believes it himself. He sure as hell doesn't know how they got here.

"What happened?" Bobby asks, and for a second John doesn't know how to answer.

"Werewolf," he says when he finally figures out that Bobby's not asking about the big picture.

"She okay?"

"Yeah," says John, and feels the answer like relief under his own skin. "Yeah, she's fine. Got scratched up, but not bit. It was too goddamn close."

Silence, then. Not quite companionable. It's not like he and Bobby parted on the best of terms. But as the quiet between them stretches, John feels some of the tension bleed from his bones. He thinks he sees the same from Bobby, thinks maybe they're still friends after all.

" _You_ ain't hurt, are you?" Bobby asks him suddenly. "Now's not the time to be a guilt-driven idiot and ignore your own injuries."

John laughs at that—bright and mostly genuine—and says, "You mean there _is_ a time for that?"

Bobby shrugs beside him, wry quirk of his eyebrow disappearing beneath the brim of his cap. "Dunno. Maybe."

John assumes the conversation is over then. His coffee is gone. The air is quiet and calm, and he's thinking about going back inside to check on his newest responsibility when Bobby's next question sideswipes him.

"Does Ellen know what you're getting up to with her daughter?" The tone of the question is heavy with _wrong_ , a whole pile of implication in the words that Bobby doesn't try to hide.

"Jesus, Bobby," John breathes. "I'm _hunting_ with the girl, not fucking her."

"I know Ellen," says Bobby, and this time his shrug is more pointed. "She'd probably kill you either way."

John sighs, loud and heavy, but Bobby's got a point. "Yeah, she knows. Pretty sure she's not happy about it, but she knows."

Bobby seems content enough with that answer, and John is happy to let the conversation die.

   
 

Bobby insists they stay for a solid week, and all he has to do is throw a pointed look at Jo every time John starts getting antsy.

When they finally hit the road, Bobby hints that they should dig around two towns East. There have been omens—demonic possession in the vicinity, he's sure of it. He planned on looking into it himself, but John and Jo showed up to bleed all over his doorstep instead.

They promise to check it out, then hit the road with a minimum of goodbyes.

Jo looks at him strangely the entirety of the drive, and John pretends not to notice.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

Jo envies John his family sometimes. There's no mistaking the glint in his eyes that signals a call from one of his boys. Usually Dean, sometimes Sam. He always gives her a quick, apologetic look and then disappears with his phone.

She doesn't mind. Really doesn't, even though she does wish she could meet them. Asking about them feels like too much of an intrusion.

But John's boys call him like tradition; matched by the odd but frequent intervals he excuses himself to make his own call to check in with them. Jo usually goes off to do her own thing for a while when that happens. Not that John is ever on the phone long, but she doesn't want him cutting things short on her account. The last thing she wants is to get in the way.

But she's conscious of the pattern. Observant. Which means she can't help but notice when it changes.

John takes off to do his own research sometimes. Jo never asks, because she knows better. Every hunter's got their thing—a big, dark ball of something that needs untangling—and that's the sort of research better done alone.

But when he comes back to her one muggy Sunday, he's a little bit off. Scared, if she has to put a word to it.

He stops calling his sons after that. Stops answering his phone with his usual warm "Dean" or "Hi, Sam." She sees all the rings he silences as calls try to come through, deliberately ignored.

She asks him about it once, because it's _nearly_ her business. His answer leaves her even more confused.

"I can't talk to them yet," he says. "I will, but I need to put it all together first."

He's manic in his speech, and doesn't seem to hear when she asks, "Put _what_ together?"

The next day they're on a new hunt, and John is back to normal.

Jo shakes it off and lets it go, because there's nothing else she can do.

   
 

The first time she insists on hustling pool, she can tell from the start that John hates the entire idea. But they're low on cash, and she knows his credit cards maxed out paying for gas and breakfast that morning. Besides, Jo is starting to feel like a freeloader.

She knows he can't really argue with the fact that they need to pay for their motel through the weekend, and what they have won't cover it. She finally gets his reluctant nod, and changes into something a little too short and a little too low.

There's no way to dissuade him from coming along, but she makes him promise to stay to the periphery. Inconspicuous, at least until she's collected her winnings. Nothing like a hovering, overprotective presence to dissuade a potential mark. He stays true to his word as she scopes the place—disappears right into the crowd while she smiles and gets to work.

It goes as well as can be expected given the circumstances, which is to say only _mostly_ disastrous. The mark pays up, however reluctantly, but he's not big on respect for personal space. She's got a knife at hand to make the guy back off quietly, but John is watching too closely for this to go any way but _bad_. Jo honestly can't tell who throws the first punch, but in the end that doesn't matter much.

Chairs and drinks go flying, and she wouldn't be much of a hunting partner if she didn't contribute to the general mayhem. It's not her fault John's overprotective and trigger happy, but Jo's got no problem stepping up once they're in it.

They duck out before the cops arrive and get back to the room not too bad for the brawl. They've got bruised knuckles and a goose egg or two, and enough cash to pay the room off for a month.

Jo kicks the door shut behind her, and even in the dim light she can see John laughing. The shake of his shoulders and spark to his eyes as he stands in the center of the room and turns to face her. There's a half-assed little lamp shining away in the corner, the only light on offer, and it sets half his smile alight.

Jo takes a step forward then, slow and not quite intentional. John's smile falters and disappears, replaced with a heavy stare and a question she's not sure how to answer.

She takes another step, and another after that. An inevitable pace across the room, closer by degrees until his hand closes on her arm and forces her to stop. By then she's figured out what it is she means to do. She's standing too close for anything else.

"That's far enough, girl," John says, but his voice sounds wrong. Thick and not quite steady, and his eyes say something completely different.

She could be misreading him. His gaze flashes bright, but maybe it's not heat. Maybe it's fear. Or maybe it's both. It doesn't matter now, not when she feels his fingers like they're burning a brand into her bicep—violent metaphor for the fact that maybe she _wants_ him to stake a claim.

She closes the thin space between them by slivers, leaning in past the hold he keeps on her arm, up to press her lips to his.

Nothing else happens. There's no crack of thunder, no bursting of the dam to let the floodwaters through, no sudden end of the world to follow the contact.

Just a kiss. Slow and soft, and they don't even touch beyond the tentative press of her mouth against his, and the place his hand clasps tight, trying and failing to hold her at a distance.

When she draws back it's with painful reluctance. His eyes stay closed through a tense, uneven stretch of moments where neither of them quite knows what to do.

Eventually they revert to their normal, nightly rituals, climbing into their own respective beds. Jo can tell that John doesn't sleep, but he pretends to. She doesn't expect to fade herself, but the anxious flutter in her stomach eventually abates. It leaves her exhausted.

She should've known he'd run, and when she wakes to morning, he and his truck are already gone.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

There are the usual portents in Walker, Minnesota. Screwed up weather patterns and mutilated cattle. John follows the signs even though he's starting three states away. It's a long haul, and maybe that's why he takes the hunt alone.

He throws a look at Jo on his way out the door, quiet steps so as not to wake her. He knows he can't stay. Knows even better that he's got no goddamn right to what she probably never meant to offer.

At his destination he finds just one demon. A nasty solo act that bruises John's ribs and gives him a heavy bump on the head before he manages to snare the thing under a devil's trap. He's not expecting it to laugh, low and rough in its borrowed throat.

"You're John Winchester," it says. "I know you. We _all_ know the Winchesters."

John ignores the scratchy voice as he digs for his journal. Page fifty-something. A new exorcism.

"The things I could tell you," the demon says before John starts reading. The words make him pause to look in its void black eyes, even though it's just trying to bait him for time.

"Word is your son's special," it says, and John shivers where he stands. "Little Sammy? Azazel's got big plans for him."

John knows the name Azazel. Yellow-eyed son of a bitch took his wife and left him drowning in a world where the only way to protect his boys was to make them warriors.

The anger is instant, and he doesn't hesitate again. He sends the thing to Hell with a raised voice and familiar Latin syllables. They echo through the wide, empty space of the old barn he chose for this fight, and he watches with a dark hint of satisfaction as the stream of smoke pours from the host's mouth.

The host doesn't survive.

John checks his phone for messages once he's back on the road. He isn't surprised that there's nothing from Jo.

But there's a message from Dean.

"Dad? I know I keep leaving you messages… don't know why you won't call us. But Sam and I are in Lawrence, and there's something in our old house. I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but… I don't know what to do. So whatever you're doing, if you could get here… _please_. I need your help, Dad."

Dean's voice shakes, an uneven quaver that leaves John's blood cold with fear. He can't breathe for a moment after the recording ends, and he has to pull onto the side of the road and breathe through the ragged edge of panic. He's never heard his son sound like that—not even at his most terrified.

Kansas is the other direction, and John pulls an illegal U-turn.

He's going to Lawrence.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

Jo follows him by tracking credit card charges for a couple days. She catches the bus from one town to the next in a long, straight line, but John is always gone by the time her feet hit the soil.

She comes so damn close once, catches the glimpse of familiar tail lights as they disappear down a highway entrance ramp in the wrong direction. The failure is nearly enough to make her pick up the phone and call Ash. But that's too much like surrender, and there's nothing she can threaten him with that will keep him from fessing up to her mother.

So she follows. All the way to Walker, Minnesota, where he slips completely off the radar. Then she doesn't know _what_ to do.

No choice but to kick up her heels and listen, because suddenly the normal credit cards aren't in use. She keeps her ear to the ground and calls half the hunters on her cell phone contacts list. None of them can tell her anything.

She's low on funds and hustling poker at a local pub when she catches sight of Gordon Walker in the corner. She takes her winnings and bows out from her space at the table.

"Hey," she says, approaching him with a friendly smile. She doesn't _like_ Gordon much, but he's always been straight with her. That goes a long way towards earning her respect, if not her trust, and it makes him useful to her now. Because Gordon, he always has the scoop on everybody. If anyone's heard mutterings about John Winchester, Gordon sure as hell has.

"Hey," he mimics, eyebrow arching in question as she claims the barstool beside him.

"Don't worry," she says. "I'm not nosing in on whatever you're hunting. Just looking for someone."

"Winchester," he says, and Jo stares at him.

No point trying to put her poker face back on, so instead she asks, "How do you know that?"

He shrugs. "Everyone knows you've been hunting together. And here you are, alone. Who else would you be looking for?"

Her blood boils a little, but it's not Gordon she's angry at. It's a fresh wash of frustration at one John Winchester. The whole rest of the hunting world has figured out they're a team. It's only John himself that seems to have missed the memo.

"Can you help me or not?" she asks, not caring if she sounds rude.

"I haven't heard anything about him in the last couple weeks," says Gordon.

"Great."

"But his boys are in Lawrence, Kansas," Gordon continues, undeterred.

"Thanks," says Jo, surprise and genuine gratitude mingling in her voice. It's as good a place to look as any; and if John has gone to ground, maybe it's got something to do with Sam and Dean.

"No problem," he says, and it's all the dismissal Jo needs.

She doesn't offer to help him on his hunt. Vampires were never her thing anyway.

   
 

When she reaches Lawrence, the logical first step is a search of motel parking lots, but Jo finds her most thorough efforts unrewarded. John's truck is nowhere to be found. It could mean he isn't here. For some reason Jo is sure it means he doesn't want anyone to know that he is.

She gets a place to stay and tracks the Winchester boys easily enough. Not too discreet, those two, especially not with that enormous beast of a car. It's a beauty, but inconspicuous is not the word.

Jo is much better at being discreet, one of her strongest skills, and she trails them for a day and a half with no sign of her real target. When they emerge from a house with a tasteful, wooden 'Psychic' sign out front, Jo almost walks up and introduces herself.

She lingers instead. Lets them drive off and out of her sight for the first time in two days.

She's probably not as startled as she should be when she walks in the front door and a kindly, round black woman says, "He's not here, child," before Jo can ask a single question.

She doesn't ask anything as silly as ' _How did you know?_ ' She steps forward instead and offers her hand in greeting.

"I'm Jo," she says.

"Yes," says the woman, a spark of amusement in her eyes as she accepts Jo's handshake. "Missouri."

"Do you know where he is?" Jo asks.

"Oh, honey," says Missouri and releases her hand. There's a sad understanding in her eyes that Jo does _not_ want to ask about, but thankfully Missouri moves right on to say, "He was here. He'll probably be back."

"Do you know where he is in the meantime?" Jo asks, because 'probably' isn't quite good enough.

"Try the Econo Lodge on West Sixth," says Missouri. She makes Jo take a cookie before showing her to the door.

   
 

John is wide-eyed startled to see her, which is about the reaction Jo's been expecting. She wants to hit him in the face. She gears up to yell at him instead.

"How did you find me?" he asks.

"You son of a bitch," she says. "Who the hell do you think you are just taking off like that?"

"Jo—"

"You're a selfish _asshole_ , is who! Are we a team or _not_?"

"I'm sorry," he murmurs.

It takes that long to sink in, but Jo sees it suddenly. The stretched fatigue of his features, too pronounced to brush aside. He looks freaked, and it suddenly occurs to her that she might not be the reason.

"Something's wrong," she says and takes a step closer. "John, what is it?"

"Don't know," he says. "Missouri's helping Sam and Dean check it out." Jo almost asks why John isn't out there himself, but she remembers the disjointed fragments of a conversation from weeks back. She remembers John trying and failing to explain why he couldn't contact his boys, and the resounding conclusion ' _not yet_.'

She doesn't know what it means, but she decides not to ask.

   
 

It feels weird waiting around with a hunt under their noses, watching from a distance as someone else does the job. It's not exactly the introduction to John's family she's been hoping for.

It's not exactly an introduction at all.

Weirder still, and a hundred times more disconcerting, is the silent gloom she watches her companion sink into. John Winchester has always been terse—driven—but this is different. This is an empty, edgy sadness that sends Jo out to research the city of Lawrence and the mysterious address Sam and Dean are investigating.

Later, she almost wishes she didn't know.

John is an empty, angry shadow in the restricted space of their motel room, and it's pure relief when the hunt finally ends.

He disappears to visit Missouri, and when he comes back his poker face is shattered to hell. Jo doesn't know whether to hug him or keep her distance.

They're two hours down the interstate when he says, "We _are_ a team. And I'm sorry for disappearing like that."

"Good," she says. And even though it's tough to keep her voice light, she adds, "Because if you ever ditch me again, the next time I hunt you down I'm stealing your truck."

It earns her a smile—small, genuine and a little unexpected.

"It won't happen again," he says.

Jo can tell it's a promise.

   
 

Several days later, Jo falls asleep in the passenger seat just north of Lincoln, and when she wakes up to early evening, John is pulling the key out of the ignition. The terrain is too familiar, and she knows without turning around what she'll see through the back window: a familiar view of the Roadhouse's front deck.

She wonders if she should've seen this coming. She hadn't been able to read the look John gave her when they climbed into the truck, but with no direction and no immediate hunt, maybe it should've been enough to clue her in.

Her instant response is indignation. A deep-set anger at John for being a presumptive son of a bitch and interfering in things that are none of his business.

"What. The _hell_. Do you think you're doing?" she asks, but he doesn't answer. When she turns to look at him, the righteous glare melts right off her face.

John still has one hand on the wheel, and he's not even looking at her. He stares straight ahead out the windshield, the expression on his face wide open. She can see the wrecked edges of the man that drove too fast out of Lawrence almost a week ago, and suddenly she's inclined to hear him out.

"It's none of my business," he says. "And if you say the word, I'll turn this truck around and drive right back out of this parking lot. No harm no foul."

"John—"

"But it's not right. You have to be able to feel that." He turns and levels a stare at her, so dark and knowing that her breath catches in her throat. "Family is everything. Pride's not worth killing your mom with worry."

That stings, makes Jo break her gaze away. There's nowhere for it to settle on the dusty, blank horizon, so she stares at her lap instead. Bites her lip and doesn't know what to say, because if pride were the only factor she'd have found her way home by now. She doesn't know how to make her voice work and explain to him at the same time that he just. Doesn't. Get it.

"She can't stop you from hunting," John says, and Jo's head snaps up so fast it hurts.

"She's my _mom_ ," says Jo. Like he's stupid, even though he's just proven that he understands after all. Her heart gives a disconcerted shiver in her chest at the thought that he reads her so easily.

"And you're a hunter," he says. "She's figured that out by now."

Jo still doesn't speak. It's too much at once, more challenge than she's ready to meet. She's not mad at him. She's just scared.

"Please," he says, and it's so soft she almost misses it. He doesn't say ' _for me_ ,' but she hears it anyway. The sun bakes into the truck, makes the air thick and hot around them, and Jo thinks about Lawrence. Thinks about John's boys and the stubborn intensity with which he's avoiding them. It should make him a hypocrite.

Instead, it's what finally convinces her to get out of the truck. Her boots kick up dust and gravel as she forces one step after another. It's late afternoon, a small handful of cars scattered around the wide patch of dirt that passes for a parking lot. The hinges of the front door squeak more than she remembers, but inside the Roadhouse sounds—and looks and smells—exactly the same.

She catches sight of her mom long before Ellen notices her, but the sudden, settling quiet is finally enough to draw her mom's attention. By the time Ellen turns and sees her, Jo already feels the silent weight of every pair of eyes in the bar.

The moment stretches so long it physically hurts, dry air making Jo's throat itch. She fights to keep her lower lip still, no time now for trembling, and she's mostly successful. Ellen's face matches hers perfectly, an off-balance mirror image that finally shatters when Ellen takes that first tentative step.

Jo doesn't move, but suddenly there's no space left between them. There's a pitcher of beer on the floor, spilling sticky foam every which way, and Jo can barely breathe through the squeezing hold as her mom hugs her tight. Her eyes sting; uninvited tears that prick behind her eyelids and make her throat tighten. It occurs to her that her arms are still hanging useless at her sides.

She raises them, finally, to cling right back, and buries her face in her mother's shoulder.

   
 

Time doesn't pass like it should for a while. She thinks maybe it's been days, but it could be longer that they stay at the Roadhouse. Everything feels off and familiar by turns, and Jo settles back into the space even though she's years past fitting into it. John hangs back the entire time, willfully caught at the periphery. His discomfort is palpable. Jo doesn't know why it sets her on edge.

For three days she doesn't know what to say to her mom. They sit at the bar every night after closing, a beer apiece, and pretend they know how to talk to each other. Jo asks about hunters and bar patrons and how business is going. Ellen asks about hunting and money and where Jo's been traveling. It's awkward as hell, and Jo mostly goes to bed with unease in the pit of her stomach.

On day four, the dam finally breaks, something in the wry quirk of Ellen's smile or the high arch of Jo's eyebrows. Something genuine and intangible that Jo can't quite place, and suddenly they're talking _to_ each other instead of _at_ each other; communicating instead of waiting for their respective turns to fill the void with chatter.

They talk about _everything_ that night. The day Jo left, the years between, the close calls and adrenaline rushes. Jo can see the fear in her mom's eyes, but it doesn't stop Ellen from listening, or from leaning forward and asking "Then what?" when the story tapers away too soon.

They talk about John, but not much. There's some stuff her mother's better off not knowing, and more that Jo's barely figured out for herself. She doesn't tell her mom that she kissed John and it scared the man so badly he took off. She doesn't say anything about the Winchester boys and the quiet terror she's seen in their father's eyes.

But they talk just the same; and it's real, and honest and such a relief that Jo aches with the knowledge that she almost walked away. She doesn't like owing people, but she could be okay with owing John Winchester for this one.

   
 

Two more days, and she's finally logging the passage of time again. It makes her wonder whether it's going to be John or herself that goes stir crazy first. She's starting to feel that distinctive edge under her skin, telling her they've been stationary too long.

It's barely dawn on a Tuesday morning, gray skies outside threatening rain. The air is tense with the hint of storm, and Jo rounds a corner to find John and Ellen in deep conversation. Their expressions are somber, no ease in either set of shoulders, and Jo can tell she should walk back the way she came.

She edges closer instead. The main bar is dim, barely lit with the immediate dawn, and she uses the gloom to her advantage. Puts herself just close enough to transform the quiet mutterings into words. Her favorite leather jacket hangs in her hands, waiting to be slung across her shoulders against the morning chill. She was headed outside.

She isn't anymore.

"Hey, now" says Ellen, hint of warmth in response to something Jo didn't hear. "You keep her alive, you're welcome in my establishment.

"I still wouldn't have blamed you for grabbing a shotgun and running me out of town," says John, the lightness in his tone so forced that Jo almost cringes. She's missing something. A giant piece of a puzzle she didn't even know about.

"John," says Ellen, and her shoulders hunch even further. "I forgave you a long time ago, for what happened to my Bill. But I'm not gonna pretend I _wasn't_ glad you stopped coming around."

That's all Jo needs to put it together, but she doesn't _want_ to. She wants it to be anything in the world besides what it sounds like, and any second one of them can stand and look at her and explain the misunderstanding away. She and John are a _team_ , and this isn't the sort of secret he gets to keep.

The jacket slips from her fingers and falls to the floor. Heavy thud of fabric and the skittering scrape of the metal zipper against wood.

John and Ellen are on their feet in an instant and looking right at her, but neither one of them starts explaining.

"Jo," says Ellen. So careful. Neither of them moves to approach her.

"What are you guys talking about?" asks Jo. She's desperate with the conflicting impulses of needing to know and desperately not wanting to hear it, and her hands hang clenched at her sides.

Neither John nor Ellen speaks, and it's exactly the confirmation Jo doesn't want.

She should stay where she is, or get herself elsewhere. Find open air and room to breathe. Instead she steps forward. Closer. Practically into John's space so she can look him right in the eyes when she says, "Tell me."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and Jo realizes with a sick jolt that the darkness she sees in John's eyes is guilt and her father's death.

She's not moving consciously, but her fist is already in motion. A hard swing and the sting of impact as she punches him in the face.

He had to have seen it coming—John Winchester is too quick for Jo to catch him off guard. But he doesn't dodge, doesn't block, doesn't do goddamn anything besides stand there and take it. He ends up slumped against the bar, and he doesn't move to right himself or meet her eyes.

She grabs her jacket from the floor on her way outside.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

John doesn't try to wait her out, and Ellen doesn't try and convince him to stay. It takes thirty quick seconds to gather his things. Even with the hospitality of Ellen's tiny guest room and a stay that threatened to border on indefinite, John hadn't felt right unpacking his gear.

He's out the door and gunning the engine within five minutes, and he pretends he doesn't notice Ellen watching his truck disappear. The passenger seat looks vacant and wrong in his peripheral vision, and his chest tightens with the first hint of something that might be mourning. He's gotten used to Jo filling his day and his truck. The girl makes a good partner.

But it's not nuclear physics figuring out that's over now. His jaw aches with the memory of a solid right hook, and he knows he deserves a hell of a lot worse. It's cowardly, taking off like this. He should stay to explain. No way to change the inevitable outcome, but he owes her better than this cut-and-run tactic.

It doesn't incline him to turn around. Ellen will fill in the gaps well enough.

He turns on the wipers when it starts to rain, and considers for a moment that it's probably for the best. Things have been getting messy. The kind of complicated that sometimes catches up with his thoughts and makes him feel like a dirty old man.

Out of sight, out of mind. It's the reassuring story he tells himself as he picks a random direction on the interstate and drives.

   
 

It doesn't take him long to work out how to fill his newfound excess of alone time. There's information he needs, a whole world of it that just isn't enough. There's no more he can glean from Bobby's books, so he goes hunting demons instead. One after another, a string of them that he stalks halfway across the continent.

None of them are particularly forthcoming, and bits and pieces of information are all he ever finds. None of the bastards are high enough in the ranks to have more than an inkling of the grand scheme. There's a chain of command, and only demons at rock bottom are stupid enough to stick around once John Winchester drives into town.

Bits and pieces aren't much, but they start to paint a bigger picture that John doesn't like. His wife, and his boys and something unpleasant on the horizon. There are patterns he can track now, and it's bordering on too late when he realizes that anyone Mary ever knew is being systematically wiped off the face of the world.

He tries to save some of them, but he's never in time. He's always too late, sometimes by minutes and others by days. Countless insurmountable walls that he keeps running into until even the attempt means nothing.

Azazel is gearing up for something huge and nasty, a fact that becomes more apparent the closer he runs on the bastard's tail. And whatever is coming, John knows with a sick, certain dread that his family is wrapped right in the middle of it.

   
 

He still gets voicemails from Dean now and then, but the message his son leaves him from Chicago hits him like even Lawrence didn't. He's been closing in on the answers he's chasing, and this doesn't track. It smells like a trap.

It's a three hour drive, and thank god he's already close. John finds the Impala parked half a black from an empty warehouse. West Erie. There's light coming from a window on the top floor, pale and unsteady.

He waits it out, standing in the protective shadow between two buildings across the street. It's damn near impossible to hold his ground when all he wants to do is charge in fighting. There's no signal for help, but then again they don't know he's coming. He has to assume his boys have it under control, because bursting in without thinking is just as likely to get them all killed.

He startles when a horrible shriek splits the air, and the top floor window shatters. A girl falls, the scream wide and splintered on her lips. He averts his eyes when she hits the ground.

John is about to run forward, tactics be damned, when he sees two familiar silhouettes in the remains of the window. They're moving slowly. Calm. It means the danger has passed.

It's all John needs to see, and he walks back to his truck. Drives on ahead, because he already knows where his sons are staying. It's no challenge at all breaking in, and he stands impatient in the dark. Staying is a bad idea, but he can't do this anymore. He needs to see his boys.

He doesn't have long to wait. Muffled voices in the hall and then a key clicking in the lock. Quiet steps, and even with his eyes adjusted to the darkness all John can see of them for a moment is a single shadow.

They notice him immediately, and he's goddamn proud for it. "Hey!" and an instant wash of light as one of them flicks the switch. Dean stands just in front of his brother, and suddenly John can _see_ his sons. Right in front of him, alive and real, and the relief is too much to keep off his face.

"Hey, boys." God but he's needed this, and his feet are already moving. He hugs them both and for a moment can't remember any of the reasons for his self-imposed exile. More important things to think about as he steps back to just _look_ at them.

"Dad, it was a trap," says Dean. "I didn't know, I'm sorry."

"It's all right," says John, and that's a relief, too. "I thought it might've been."

He tries to warn his sons off the demon without giving away too much. Safer they don't know for now, but he can't protect them from everything. He can just try to keep them out of the crossfire.

"Dad, you don't have to worry about us," Sam says, and it's barely above a whisper.

"Of course I do," says John. As if he could do anything else. "I'm your father."

He should've known better than to let his guard down—even now—and when the attack comes a moment later, he has half a second to remember that this was a _bad idea_. The room flies past, or maybe he's flying _through_ it, and he hears Dean yell, " _No!_ " before the sound of impact tells him Dean is down, too.

John might be screaming—he can't really tell—but there are claws and pain and a weight pinning him so hard he can't fight back. Sam says something, a loud yell that might be a command, and John closes his eyes just in time for the room to erupt in light and smoke.

A flare, he realizes, as the claws and heavy hold vanish. His brilliant boy, and he's proud as hell even though he can't seem to get his feet under him. One of them reaches his side, no idea which until he hears Dean's voice by his ear.

"This way," says Dean and helps him to his feet.

It's easy after that, as instinct makes him move through the pain. The street outside is wet and dark, eerily quiet, and John doesn't feel his own injuries half so hard as the ones Sam and Dean are wearing. His boys are clawed to hell and barely standing, and maybe John's not much better off, but he should have seen this coming.

Sam doesn't want to split up. Dean knows they have to. And in the end there's only one way it can go; with John getting in his truck and leaving his sons behind.

He makes it two counties over before the fatigue and blood loss force him to find a place and stop for the night. Most of the wounds he can stitch himself. The rest aren't too bad. After a shower and a round of bandages, he barely makes it to the bed.

He'll lay low for a few days. Lick his wounds and watch for infection, knowing his sons are safe, doing the same thing wherever _they_ landed.

His boys are his weak spot, and he can't help it. He needs to know they're safe.

   
 

A knock at his motel room door a week later has him reaching for his gun. He's driven just long enough to hop towns a couple of times in the past few days. Not far, because the good painkillers don't leave him in great shape to drive. He hasn't taken any today, is feeling alive and mobile enough to pack up and really _move_.

The knock makes him nervous, because he knows he's made himself too easy to track. Too close to stationary. He checks the salt lines on his way to the door and looks through the peephole. He's got a flask of holy water in one hand and his gun on the table beside him.

Whatever he figured might be on the other side of that door, he's nowhere near expecting it to be Jo. She stands in a blast of noontime sunlight, arms crossed impatiently.

John opens the door slowly and doesn't try to pretend he's _not_ surprised as hell.

He catches the shift in expression when she sees him. It's just a hint of wide-eyed concern; just a momentary flicker before the careful mask of neutrality is back in place. He must still look like hell, no shock there.

She looks like she's thinking about punching him again, but her posture is all measured stillness.

"Hey," says John, even though speaking first might be tempting fate a little too soon after fate tried to claw his face off.

"What did I tell you about ditching me?" says Jo. There's no lightness in her tone, forced or otherwise. "I warned you about my carjacking skills."

"Sorry," says John, and he means it a hundred times over. "Didn't figure you'd ever want to speak to me again."

She nods like that makes sense, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. He can tell it's taking everything she's got to keep meeting his eyes, and he can't quite wrap his head around the fact that she's _here_ , standing on his doorstep and _speaking_ to him and, it occurs to him a beat too late, waiting for an invitation.

"Can I come in, or what?" she asks, and John opens the door wider. He doesn't bother to gesture her through, just watches her stride across the room and dump her duffels and knapsack on the bed nearest the bathroom.

The room has two queens. Force of habit. She turns to look at him, a knowing glint lighting her eyes as she asks, "So what are we hunting?"

John can tell she hasn't forgiven him.

But he can also tell she's decided to try.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

It's a truck stop in the middle of the afternoon, map spread out on a table between them, when Jo finally gets up the nerve to ask, "What happened to you anyway? I turn around for five minutes and by the time I get back you're torn to shreds. How does that work?"

She tries to make it sound casual, but she knows he's not fooled. It shouldn't make her feel nosy. It's not like she _needs_ to know. It's just that, yeah, she sort of _does_. And if the sun streaming in through the window hits her eyes just right and gives her away, it doesn't make much difference. It's not like she's ever bothered keeping secrets from John.

Which doesn't make for a two-way street. It hasn't been so far, no reason to change now. Except when he finally meets her eyes, there's a look on his face that suggests otherwise. He's deliberately open, and her breath lodges low with surprise.

When he puts the walls back up, it's not the same as closing her out.

It's still a sucker punch when he says, "I'm sure you know about my wife." From zero to ninety-five—no information to _everything_ —in the time it takes Jo's heart to skip a beat.

"Yeah," she says when her voice works again. Everyone knows about Mary Winchester. John's been discreet, but hunters talk. The information is out there.

John nods and doesn't meet her eyes when he says, "It was a demon that killed her. I've been hunting it down ever since."

He doesn't have to say this discussion is just between them. She can read it in the tight hunch of his shoulders and the way he grips his coffee mug too tightly. It doesn't matter anyway; not really. Not so far. She didn't know it was a demon, but the rest? That's not new information. It also doesn't answer her question.

"You found him?" she asks, trying to fill in the blanks for herself.

"No. But he got at my boys. I played it stupid. Showed my hand when I shouldn't have."

"Oh my god," says Jo, voice too soft in her throat. "Are they—?"

"Fine," says John. Quick reassurance. "They're fine. But it was too close."

Even through the lingering anger clouding her headspace, Jo feels a pang of guilt telling her she should have been there.

"It confirmed something I already suspected," John continues. "This demon isn't done with my family. Every scrap of information I've found points to something _bad_ coming. Bigger than us. I don't know how to keep it away from my boys."

Jo absorbs it all, connecting dots and trying to fit the puzzle together. Most of it is news. Some of it isn't. All of it scares her shitless.

"Is there anything I can do?" she asks.

"Yeah," says John. "You can walk away. You'd be safer just about _anywhere_ that's not with me."

Jo doesn't bother being offended, because his face says he knows she's staying. She wouldn't have hunted him down again if she weren't in it for the long haul.

"Nice try," she says.

"Worth a shot."

Jo watches him swallow the last of his coffee and throw a ten down on the table. She folds up the map and follows him out the door.

   
 

"There are other signs," he tells her in Oregon, an October chill in the air around them. "Omens that Bobby's been tracking. They've gotten worse in the past couple weeks."

Jo could ask what sort of omens, but what really matters is, "What does it mean?"

"Some of his texts mention an apocalypse. _All_ of them talk about battle."

"A war?" she asks.

"It fits."

Demons have been disconcertingly common lately, a slowly spreading epidemic. The more she thinks about it, the stronger it hits her.

Maybe they're fighting a war already.

   
 

It takes her a couple weeks to wrap her head around the idea of a demon war, and by then they've fallen into a different hunt. No sulfur this time, but a zombie in the woods.

The thing has nested deep enough in that they have to chase it down with flashlights, silver stakes and ammo in hand as they follow it through the trees. All the way to a dead patch of earth and the gnarled corpse of a tree that serves as a grave marker.

They pin it to a tree root in the shallow hole beneath—one silver stake through the heart—and they burn it for good measure.

One hour and a long shower later, she's too wired to sleep. The giddy rush of adrenaline is slow to fade, and she's not ready to crash.

She can't tell if John is still feeling it or not, but the man's an insomniac anyway. It doesn't take much to convince him they should go out for an hour or two.

It's just a nearby pub. A couple beers and an order of fries, and Jo laughs for the first time in what feels like weeks. She's lighthearted with victory. Kind of wants to go that one more round, but she's not oblivious to how carefully John has paced himself. She's never seen the man drunk, and she's starting to doubt she ever will.

At any rate, it's no fun being the tipsy one out, so she stops well before that. She pays the tab while he's in the bathroom, and when they step outside the quiet night air is a startling contrast to the noisy bar.

"What now?" Jo asks. Her elbow barely bumps John's with every step. He shrugs, and it probably isn't coincidence that suddenly there's an extra foot of pavement between them as they meander in the vague direction of their current digs.

She walks a couple steps ahead and feels his eyes following her for most of the trip. He's still watching her back at the room with the door locked and dead-bolted behind them.

She turns around to catch him at it, and all she wants to do is push the issue. It's been a long time coming, and Jo's a smart girl. She knows full goddamn well that it's not just her that's interested and distracted and wanting. Jo Harvelle lives her world by reading people, and there's too much empirical evidence to ignore. John clearly wants her.

It doesn't mean he'll ever _take_ her.

Whether it's Jo who crumbles or John who turns away first, the moment dies unexploited. When Jo crawls into her own bed, it's cold and frustratingly empty.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

John is wide awake and driving through the dead center of night when the other shoe finally hits the pavement. The wheel is steady in his hands, and the road is an empty stretch somewhere a hundred miles between highways. Feels like driving to the middle of nowhere.

"Pull over," says Jo, even though she's supposed to be asleep by now. They're driving straight through until morning, no time to lose on their way to interview tomorrow's witnesses, and he told her to get some rest. He's not all that surprised she disobeyed the order.

"What—?" he starts to ask, but Jo interrupts him.

"Now," she says.

Her voice is edged with enough determination that he knows something is up. He complies, because her tone doesn't allow for delay. The side of the road is all crunching gravel as he slows to a stop with one tire in the grass. He hesitates a moment, but eventually kills the engine and puts on the parking break so he can turn to her and ask, "What is it?"

Maybe he should have seen it coming, and maybe he just decided not to, but Jo doesn't hesitate for so much as a second. She's two steps ahead of him, folding up the armrest in the middle of the seat and sliding right across—all before he's finished putting two and two together, and even now he isn't coming up with anything near four.

She climbs into his lap—straddles him right there in the front seat—and this kiss is everything her first one wasn't. It's dirty and deep, _demanding_.

John puts a stop to it with a shove. Too much force, and it throws her back against the wheel so hard the sound of the horn breaks through the night. It would startle the hell out of him if adrenaline weren't already setting his pulse to panic. As it is, he watches the heavy rise and fall of her breathing and feels her warm weight still solid on his legs. Still too close, even though his hands hold her at as much of a distance as they can.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asks, a stupid question that comes out a heavy growl.

She stares him down with dark eyes, barely lit in the dim glow of dashboard and headlights, but her determination is clear enough.

"I'm not a child," she says. Her words cut right to the heart of everything, and John is distracted by the warm texture of denim beneath his fingers.

"Could've fooled me," he says, because it's the only defense he can think of. His tone is needlessly sharp as he says, "Playing with the grownups is overrated, kiddo."

Instead of looking chastened and uncomfortable, Jo just looks pissed. She shoves forward against his restraining hands, and he doesn't have enough leverage to hold her off. She ends up right back in his space, close and steady and right where he needs her _not_ to be.

"You think you can talk trash and get me to back off?" she asks him. Her voice echoes soft and dangerous with challenge. "Newsflash, buddy. That's not the kind of dirty talk I go for."

He's not expecting her to close that last half inch, and the press of her mouth draws a startled sound from his throat. The kiss is angry—all sharp, harsh edges to prove a point.

John could push her away again, but he doesn't. It's not surrender, exactly, when he reaches a hand to brush her hair aside. He tries not to think about the exploring thrust of her tongue as he deliberately gentles the kiss. Takes careful control and softens it until it's something else entirely.

When he pushes her away a second time, it's careful; not a repeat of the same startled shove from before. She eyes him through thick lashes, obviously trying to read him in the dark. He swallows hard before he speaks.

"I'm not doing this with you, girl," he says, and his voice already sounds rough-shot and thick in his throat. "I won't take advantage like that."

"Don't you go all stoic gentleman on me." She shakes her head in stubborn denial, and the movement brushes her hair across his hand where it still rests against her throat. He can feel the flutter-quick edge of her pulse, and it makes his breath catch somewhere low and dangerous. There's probably something he should say here, but he can't find his voice.

"It's not like you'd be my first," Jo presses. "Not by a long shot."

"That doesn't make it right," says John, but it feels like the first subtle chink in his armor.

"Doesn't make it _wrong_ , either," says Jo, and leans in too close.

"Your mom would kill me," he says, and knows he's fishing now—grasping for any purchase he can find.

Jo doesn't try to argue otherwise. Doesn't try and suggest they pretend it away either. All she says is, "It's not her life."

When she kisses him a third time, John finally lets himself feel it. _This_ is surrender, though maybe he was lost all along.

He pulls her flush against him and rides with it, holds her tight and close. Her hair tickles him where it falls and frames his face, and he brushes it aside. Keeps every touch gentle, his mouth opening at her first insistence and letting her steer.

It's not meant to be careful. He knows she's not fragile. But there's a feeling of reverence under his skin—a worshipful sense of awe, even as he feels himself go hard in his jeans. Even when she grinds down against him, whiney need and impatience, and there's no _way_ she can miss the hardening heat, even through so much denim. He's gentle because, even though she's got him riled—even though she's a willful little spitfire that gets in his face and challenges his authority—he can't get past feeling like she's something precious under his hands. Can't get past the instinctive need to protect, or the fact he's got no right to this.

Jo scoots back a little on his lap, a movement that makes him worry he's gone too far until he feels the subtle slip of her reaching between them to open his fly.

Her hand is steady and warm—slim and experienced—and she's better at this than she's got any right to be. He buries his face against her throat, but it doesn't muffle a goddamn thing when her touch finally throws him over the edge.

A moment to get down from the rush, and then John shifts and maneuvers. Guides her with mostly steady hands until she's lying on her back across the front seat. He kisses her again, his hands at the clasp of her jeans, and swallows the needy sounds straight from her mouth. Ready to return the favor.

Never let it be said that John Winchester doesn't know how to please a woman.

Even in the cramped confines of the truck, even with nothing but his fingers, his hand down the front of her jeans gets the job done. He works her right up to a frenzy, watches as she comes apart beneath him, and then doesn't stop. She dissolves into a helpless, wild _thing_ beneath his hands—her back arched, head thrown back to reveal so much long, pale neck. John wants to mark her up, but forces himself to focus on his task instead.

He doesn't stop until he's taken her completely apart for a second time.

The guilt settles in fast as he puts himself back together. John has the truck back on the road by the time Jo sits up. Silence triumphs between them, somewhere halfway between edgy and awkward, and John isn't inclined to speak. There isn't really anything he can say.

He knows better than this.

Ellen is going to kill him.

Except Ellen won't _have_ to kill him, because John silently vows not to let it happen again.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

Whatever Jo may have expected after that, John's immediate withdrawal isn't the response she'd hoped for. It feels like falling on her ass back at square one. Maybe _before_ square one, because they're backsliding. The man keeps her at even more of a distance than before.

John doesn't take off this time, but Jo can tell it's a close thing and nothing but his promise is holding him back. He walls himself off instead, and it makes him impossible to read.

Jo doesn't know how to push the issue when pushing might only end in disaster. It hasn't done much good so far, and maybe it's time to surrender. She could still walk away.

The thought jerks her up short, an unpleasant jolt in her chest. She doesn't think it again.

   
 

One week later, Jo is in the driver's seat when John gets a call that drains the color from his face. She throws him a look, but he shakes his head not to pull over. Keep driving.

"When?" John asks, and his voice is so rough it hurts to listen to. His left hand rests on the seat between them, and Jo wants to reach out and cover it with her own. Tactile reassurance.

Instead she keeps her hands on the wheel and her eyes mostly on a horizon that's gone bright with the light of just-past-sunrise.

"Yeah," says John. "Yeah, thanks. You watch yourself, too." He hangs up and is silent long enough that Jo figures he's trying to remember how to breathe. She knows what that feels like.

"We need to turn around," says John at last. "Take the next u-turn. We're going to Colorado."

"What happened?" Jo asks, even as she starts looking for dirt patches across the median. She checks for cops, because there's the requisite sign. No U-Turn. But the coast is clear, and she throws John an expectant look once she's following his new directions.

"Old friend of mine," says John. "Daniel Elkins. We'd been… out of touch."

"Parted on bad terms?" asks Jo, and it would be a little funny if there weren't such an obvious shadow of mourning in John's eyes. The man has a tendency to alienate people.

"You could say that," says John, and it means yes.

"Is he dead?" Jo asks. It's the only thing that matches the look on his face.

"Yeah," says John. "We need to check it out."

"I'm sorry," says Jo, and hates that there's nothing she can do besides drive.

   
 

They hit Manning, Colorado, and Jo can tell John wants to drop her off at the first cabin-themed motel they find. It's John behind the wheel now, and at the first sign of braking she throws him a warning glare. He has the good sense to look sheepish and keep on driving.

It's late night on the main drag that passes for downtown, and Jo is surprised when John slows the truck to a stop against the curb. He kills the lights and engine, puts the truck into park, and Jo looks at him in surprised confusion.

"Look," he says, head tilted towards the front window; and she does. There's a black '67 Impala parked just four car-lengths ahead of them, and _now_ she gets it. She knows that car.

They wait and watch until Sam and Dean emerge from a well-lit door along the street, bathed momentarily in fluorescent light as they climb into their car.

"Wait here," John says, climbing out of the truck. Jo doesn't have to be told twice, but she unbuckles her seatbelt. Just in case.

Seems like barely five minutes later John is back, and he hands her an open envelope, closing the door on a slam and starting the engine.

"What is this?" she asks, buckling back in.

"Read it," he says.

She opens it and skims as he drives, and her eyes widen with every word.

"No way," she says on a hushed breath. "No fucking way. It's a _myth_ , it's not _real_." Because she's heard of this gun—of _course_ she has—and there's no way it exists.

"Apparently it is. And it's gone." John puts the truck into park again, and Jo realizes they're already sitting in front of a motel wall, a drab line of doors straight ahead. "Come on," says John, a soft light in his eyes. "Time you met my boys."

Her heart is stuck at a rapid pace as she follows him into room nineteen.

"This Jo?" asks Dean.

John smiles almost indulgently, the edgy hum of nerves barely visible as he says, "Sam. Dean. Jo Harvelle."

Both brothers are sizing her up, although Sam is more obvious about it. The only sign in Dean is the sharp glint in his eyes, calculated evaluation in sharp contrast to the comfortable slouch of his shoulders. Sam looks kind of like he's sucking on a lemon.

"Hi," she says, smiling and giving an awkward little half-wave. Dean looks to his father, some secret question in his eyes, and in her peripheral vision she can see John nod.

Apparently that's the deciding moment, because Dean's face spreads into a wide, genuine grin as he steps forward and shakes her hand. Sam drops the lemon expression and follows suit.

"Nice to finally meet the chick that's been keeping Dad alive," says Dean, and she doesn't miss the less than subtle trail of his eyes running her up and down. Apparently Sam catches the look, because the guy—and _god_ he's taller up close—snorts and rolls his eyes.

"So," says Dean, coughing as if to clear his throat. "What now?"

   
 

Sneaking into the vampires' barn turns into an unmitigated disaster, and they can't get their hands on the Colt—let alone save the cage full of human food stock. Jo is in line with Sam and Dean as they dash into the woods and up the hill, making fast time back to the vehicles they left parked in the brush.

John isn't close enough behind, isn't in sight when they turn back the way they came, and Dean gives a low yell of, "Dad!" into the muggy air. Jo doesn't breathe as they wait, and the machete—a spare from the trunk of the Impala—is heavy in her grip. She's prepared to run right back down the hill, even though she knows John would yell at her not to, and her pulse throbs ready in her veins. She barely holds herself back.

Relief sings in her blood when she finally catches sight of him. His eyes find her, and he looks every bit as relieved as Jo feels, footsteps carrying him quickly up the hill.

The machete isn't in her hand anymore—dropped in the dirt somewhere behind her, and she realizes only belatedly that she's moving. That her feet are carrying her forward, and when she finally stops she knows she's too close. She's practically breathing his air, staring like she needs to be sure he really made it out in one piece.

She's about to touch him—reach out for tangible reassurance—when he finally breaks eye contact and moves deliberately away.

"They won't follow," he says as he steps around and past her. "They'll wait until nightfall."

Jo stares out into the woods long enough to get her pulse back under control. She moves slowly as she retraces her steps and picks up the abandoned machete, dusting dirt and leaves off of the blade.

Sam is already back in the car, John in the driver's seat of the truck. Dean is standing by the Impala's open trunk, waiting for her to hand over the weapon so he can put it away.

When she holds it out to him, hilt first, there's a bright glow of understanding in his eyes.

Jo turns her back quickly and makes for the truck.

   
 

There's not much they can do before nightfall—only one thing, in fact. And that has to wait until the morgue closes up for the evening, so they're stranded in the meantime.

"I've got some calls to make," is all John says before he disappears entirely, dropping her at Sam and Dean's motel room. Instinct and logic tell her he's got some contacts to talk to about a gun.

Sam and Dean smile at her, friendly but clearly without any idea what to say, and Jo suddenly feels completely out of place. They aren't her family, aren't even her _friends_ —just two guys she barely knows that probably know _exactly_ what's going on in her head, and she's pretty sure she couldn't manufacture a more awkward scenario if she tried.

"I want coffee," she blurts. "Do you guys want coffee?"

They both look about as startled at the question as she feels, and Sam says, "Naw, but… thanks."

"You?" she asks, turning to Dean, even though it's barely a pretense as he smiles and shakes his head.

"Okay," she says. "Well, I'll… be at the place down the street. Drinking coffee. Just call me if something comes up, okay?"

She takes her time and walks slowly, because John might be _hours_ getting back with useful information and a better plan. It's barely past noon.

But Jo can only occupy herself for so long with coffee and a day old newspaper, and she's trudging her way back after only an hour. Should've thought to bring her computer, make herself useful. She could call some of her own contacts, see if any of them know more about the Colt, but in the end she decides not to. She doesn't know who the Winchesters trust, and this isn't her fight.

Jo's hands are full, carrying coffee even though both boys said no. Distraction or peace offering, she's not even sure. But she's got three coffees in hand, just in case, resting in a mulch gray cardboard tray.

There aren't enough keys to go around for the one room that's been serving as base camp, so the metal latch is folded on the wrong side of the door, propping it open. It tells her Sam and Dean are still here, sure as the Impala parked out front. There's no sign of John's black truck, and Jo is tempted to wait outside. The low stoop looks inviting, not a bad height for sitting—and _outside_ , which is a plus.

Still, it would be rude to hide out here in broad daylight, so she pushes the door open instead. Slowly, because she doesn't want to make a big entrance. What she sees stops her short.

Sam and Dean are by the far wall, and at first Jo thinks she's just seeing things from a bad angle. Sam's body brackets his brother in, and all Jo can really see is Sam's back as it blocks Dean from view. Logically, Jo's brain tells her, this _can't_ be what it looks like.

But she catches a snippet of conversation, Dean's voice on a breathy, "—bad idea, dude."

"I don't care," says Sam; at least Jo's pretty sure that's what he says. His voice is barely audible. He shifts his stance and suddenly she's got a view of Sam's hand, resting on Dean's hip like ownership, his thumb moving in a barely visible slip of movement. Which means that this _is_ exactly what it looks like, and her stomach gives a sick little lurch as the dots connect in her head.

She backs out the way she came as quietly as she can. This isn't her mess, none of her goddamn business, and she's careful as she sets the door ever so gently shut. Just the propped-open crack left as she moves away.

She keeps her footsteps silent despite the gravel, a cautious retreat all the way back to the far end of the lot, and then stops to consider her options. She's about to turn around and hike right back to the coffee shop when she catches a familiar black-metal glint of John's truck down the road. He's back, and there's nothing but a red stoplight holding him off.

Jo decides lighting quick what to do next. It's a moment of bright clarity that has her chucking the carton tray into the trash and balancing the three cups of coffee in her hands. She's tended bar for years, and it's a piece of cake carrying all three cups without spilling.

She's not nearly so silent as she moves across the gravel lot this time, though she tries not to overdo it—too much of a show and they'll know something is up.

"I know you both said you don't want coffee," she says as she turns and shoves the door open with her ass. "But it's gonna be a long night." By the time she's standing in the room there's no sign anything was amiss. Dean has his work spread across one bed, cleaning the weapons. Sam is clicking away at his computer over by the window.

John is all of thirty seconds behind her, slipping into the room with his silent default and throwing her a grateful smile as he snags one of the coffees from her hands.

Dean's eyes give her an unreadable look when he finally accepts the beverage she offers him.

   
 

The morgue is eerily silent around them as Jo and Dean make their way out of the building, jar of dead man's blood in hand. There's not a soul around besides the nightshift security guard doing his initial rounds.

Reality is, this isn't a two person job. Jo's only along because she couldn't say no to the look John gave her when he said, "I want you to go with Dean." It was a pointed look, a heavy expression that said he needed to talk to Sam alone. Dean must have seen it, too, because he didn't protest when Jo followed him out the door.

In the morgue, they avoid the security guard entirely by sneaking out the office window that granted them entry in the first place. They've got no reason to expect trouble, but Jo has a knife at hand anyway. The jar is a heavy weight in her grasp, and she doesn't relax until they're two blocks down the road and standing beside Dean's car.

The air hangs still around them, chilly with late sunset, but Jo's coat is warm enough to keep her from shivering. She waits for Dean to unlock the car, but when a full minute goes by she finally raises her eyes to find him watching her, his elbows propped on the roof of the car.

"You saw us, didn't you," he says. Jo swallows hard, but she doesn't answer. She knows it wasn't a question. "Why did you cover our asses back there?" he asks, and Jo looks away with an embarrassed shrug.

The street rings silent with her lack of response, drawn out and uncomfortable, and finally she says, "Because family is everything. Especially to your dad. He shouldn't find out like that."

"He shouldn't find out at all," says Dean, and Jo bites her tongue. He's right. If John knew what his sons got up to in his absence… Jo thinks it might just kill the man.

"What about you?" Dean asks, his voice heavy and guarded. "Why are you so cool with it?"

"I'm not." She crosses her arms and suddenly wonders if it's true. "Anyway, it isn't… It's none of my business, you know?"

"Yeah, okay," he says, and Jo finally hears the click of the car unlocking. She settles into the passenger seat and puts her knife away, carefully cradling the glass jar in her lap as she buckles in. She waits for Dean to settle, for the slam of the driver's side door, and then for the rev of the engine—but Dean doesn't start the car. She can feel his eyes on her again, heavy and considering, and whatever it is he's itching to talk about now, Jo's pretty sure she doesn't want to know.

"Look, it's not my business—"

"You're right, it's not," she cuts him off, and it triggers an uncomfortable pause. There's suddenly not enough room in this car, and all she wants is to hear the sound of the engine turning over as they pull away from the curb and drive back to the motel. But already she knows better than to hope Dean will drop it.

"Are you in love with him?" Dean asks, voice soft and careful, and the question is so unexpected that Jo feels the entire world catch in her throat.

"No!" she says, too fast and harsh and rough. Her eyes fly to meet Dean's, and his expression is a quiet, neutral blank. Deliberate. _He knows_ , she realizes, and wonders why he even bothered to ask. She takes a minute to remember how to breathe, and she doesn't try to deny it again. "You gonna lecture me on how it's fucked up?" she finally asks.

"I'm not that much of a hypocrite," says Dean, shoulders moving in a shrug that's anything but casual. "Besides, he's closer to happy than I've seen him in a long time." Jo feels the words settle in somewhere below her heart, and they warm her by nervous degrees.

It gives her hope, and that's dangerous. It would almost be easier if Dean were warning her off, and she suddenly wants to lash out; because it _is_ fucked up, and who is Dean to offer her something that feels so much like validation?

"He got my dad killed, you know," she says, and the words raise a familiar, muted surge of anger in her chest. Jo has forgiven John Winchester for the mistakes that took her father away, but apparently she's not as far past the ache of revelation as she thought. "And I tried, I really did… but I couldn't figure out how to hate him." Because even on day one, with her knuckles sore from punching John in the face and her hair soaked through with rain, she knew it was too late. She was too vested, too wrapped up in the man to let him walk away; and the rage in her chest hadn't been quite enough to conquer the burn of something else buried too deep to evade.

Jo doesn't want to meet Dean's eyes, but she does anyway. She's terrified she'll find pity waiting for her, but the expression is something else entirely. Nothing but a small smile and quiet understanding, and it's all Jo can do not to open the car door and escape into the night.

"He's been alone a long time," says Dean. "I don't know, maybe you're good for each other."

Jo's got no idea what to say to that, but apparently he's not expecting anything. The words are barely out of his mouth when he turns and finally— _finally_ —starts the car. Jo stares out the window as they drive, and tries her damnedest not to think.

   
 

They run a step too close to disaster, same as always, but recovering the Colt goes more or less as planned. Jo is good with a crossbow, and it turns out the gun really _can_ kill anything. It can kill a vampire anyway, with a shot to the head, and that's not supposed to be possible. Jo's willing to step up and believe it can kill other things, too. Maybe even the demon she knows John has been hunting for so many years.

They don't stick around or follow the remaining vampires. They're too busy getting the hell out of dodge, and it's a Budget Inn & Suites the next town over where they get a couple of rooms and crash right out. Jo doesn't even bother to change before climbing into bed. She just shucks off her jacket and jeans, and climbs under the covers still wearing everything else. She's out before she even thinks to wonder if John will sleep.

In the morning the room is empty, the other bed obviously not even touched. There's a tense, ugly moment where Jo wonders if she's been left behind, but John's duffel is in the corner by the door. His keys are on the table beneath the window, and she can hear mutterings of conversation through the wall above her head. Even without being able to make out the words, she'd recognize the gravel rough edge of John's voice anywhere.

She drags her discarded pants back on and hurries outside, feet quick to cover the steps that take her next door. By the time she's got a hand poised to knock, the voices on the other side of the door are raised enough for her to make out the exchange.

"No," comes John's voice, and he sounds furious. "Something like this starts happening to your brother you pick up the phone and you _call_ me."

"Call you?" Dean this time. "Are you kidding me? Dad, we've _been_ calling you ever since you dropped off of the map. Getting you on the phone… I got a better chance of winning the lottery."

Jo realizes belatedly that she's hesitating, and she's not sure if it's because she's desperate for information or if she's just reluctant to interrupt. Either way, she's standing here listening in on a conversation she wasn't invited to, and that's enough. Her hand is mostly steady as she raps on the wood.

John says something else before the door opens, something softer that she can't make out, but when he invites her in the look in his eyes says, ' _I'll tell you later_.' She nods a greeting as she steps over the threshold, and the moment of silence that follows is only a little bit uncomfortable.

"So what now?" Dean finally asks, crossing his arms and leaning back against a rickety dresser. "Sam's… _intel_ doesn't give us any clear leads, so what do we do?"

Jo knows the question isn't meant for her, so she keeps her mouth shut.

"We keep hunting." John says it like an order. "We'll split up and keep our eyes open, keep looking. We have the Colt now. We'll get our chance."

Sam and Dean both nod, but there's wariness in their faces.

"Swear you won't go after it without us," Sam says, and suddenly the look they're both wearing makes perfect sense. They're scared John will leave them out when it's time to fight. Jo doesn't blame them for worrying.

"I promise," says John, and Jo feels relief settle into her lungs. She hadn't even realized she was holding her breath. "We need more information first," John continues. "But you're right. We're stronger as a family. And I _will_ call you when it's time."

"Good," says Dean, and then turns a bright, intense look on Jo. "And _you_. You've got our numbers. You call us if he gets it in his head to change his mind."

Jo is smiling before she realizes it, a small, easy smirk to cement her certainty as she says, "He won't. But I promise."

As they climb in their separate vehicles to part ways, John turns to his boys and says, "Watch yourselves. Something big is coming."

Jo watches Sam's throat work in a swallow as the youngest Winchester says, "I know. I've seen it."

   
 

John aims for the Roadhouse and starts driving, and Jo knows it's as much for her sake as it is the need to check in and see what the wider network of hunters knows about the impending darkness.

After forty minutes on the road, John says, "Sammy has psychic abilities." His voice is low and calm, a deliberate veneer of control, but Jo can hear the twisting terror beneath the words. Her own breath catches at the information, and she knows John too well to think he's anything but scared shitless. She doesn't call him on it.

"What kind of abilities?" she asks instead, even though the smarter thing would be to let the conversation drop as fast as it started.

"Visions," says John, knuckles tight on the steering wheel as he goes back to watching the road. "He sees things. Things that have to do with this demon. I don't know what it means, but I don't like it."

"That what you were fighting about when I knocked?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"You've done everything you can," she points out, and catches the nearly imperceptible flinch her words elicit. "John, they're good hunters. You've prepared them for what's coming."

"How do you prepare anyone for the Apocalypse?" he asks, and his voice is dry with bitterness and that stubborn hint of fear.

"You've prepared them to fight," Jo says quietly. "What more can you possibly do?"

They drive the rest of the distance in silence, with Jo reminding herself to stay on her own side of the truck. It's hard, because all she wants to do is reach out. Words aren't enough, and she knows it. All she wants to do is reach for John, find out if the right touch can smooth away the heavy lines creasing his brow.

But John is folded stubbornly in on himself, shoulders radiating an unapproachable shield that tells her an invasion of his space won't be appreciated right now. She sits on her hands the whole of the drive, because it's all she can do to keep herself in check.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

At the Roadhouse, John doesn't hesitate to accept the pint Ellen offers, even though it's barely noon. There's something ominous in the air as the three of them settle in around a table in the empty bar. John appreciates the cool slide of liquid down his throat, the chill of the glass in his hands, and he watches Ellen in the sunlight that streams in through the front window.

"Something big is coming," she says, taking a long pull of her own drink and then setting it aside. "The word ' _Apocalypse_ ' is bouncing around, and signs of demonic activity are off the goddamn charts. Bobby's got Ash running a tracking program, and it doesn't look good."

"But there's something else," Jo cuts in. Her eyes are steady on her mother, reading something in Ellen's face that John seems to have missed entirely. "There's more."

Ellen sighs and rubs her temple, slouching as she says, "I keep hoping it'll turn out to be a coincidence."

"Mom, _what_?"

"How much do you know about psychics?" Ellen asks, glancing back and forth between them with the question. John's blood runs suddenly cold, and he barely resists the urge to exchange a look with Jo.

"Why?" Jo asks, and John feels relief and gratitude flood his chest. Not that he doesn't trust Ellen—he's never had any reason not to. But he's not ready to tell her about this yet, and he barely registers the rest of the question as Jo asks, "Mom, what do psychics have to do with the Apocalypse? There have _always_ been psychics."

"There've been patterns recently. Psychic kids going missing, dead, or crazy. We only hear about 'em from other hunters, but Ash has been tracking them the best he can." Ellen reaches for her beer again and downs a hefty swallow before continuing, "The kids are all the same age. And John." She traps him with a look, open and worried and sympathetic. "Most of them lost a parent in a nursery fire when they were six months old."

In his peripheral vision he sees Jo's eyes go wide, and John knows what Ellen is trying to say. _How_ John got into hunting isn't exactly a secret—he stumbled into this world with a messy bang, and most hunters know the story. Ellen is trying to warn him that something might be wrong with Sam, and John suddenly wishes he had his boys somewhere he could keep an eye on them. Sam's visions about the demon are freaky enough—now it turns out his son's not the only one. And if the other psychics Sam's age are disappearing, then…

John cuts the train of thought off before the panic gets a chance to show in his eyes. He reminds himself that Sam's not out there clueless. Sam is smart, is capable. And most importantly, Sam has Dean.

He thinks, for just a moment, about not telling Ellen the rest of the story. Jo is obviously willing to play dumb for him, let him make the call himself. She hasn't outed Sam yet, and a glance tells John that she won't do it without his go ahead.

But with the whole goddamn world on the line, secrecy has too much potential to bite them in the ass. Worse, he doesn't feel right asking Jo to lie to her mom. Ellen can be trusted. He's sure of it.

"I know about Sam," he says, meeting Ellen's worried eyes with as open a look as he can muster. "I didn't know about the other psychics."

"Is he okay?" Ellen asks, startled but quick to recover. "John, with everything that's going on—"

"He's fine," John reassures. "Dean's watching out for him, and it's just visions." An itch at the back of his skull makes him ask, "Have any of the other psychics been hunters?"

"No," says Ellen, and John _almost_ breathes easier. "Not so far. But Bobby says a war's coming, and I'd bet big money he's right."

   
 

They stay the night, and John isn't all that surprised when Jo corners him out back a little before midnight. He's just after a breath of fresh air, or a glimpse of the stars, something to quiet the slow surge of panic that spreads his chest when he thinks too hard about his boys.

The bar is a muted thrum of noisy chatter behind him, the only light a dim glow from the windows around the side of the building. But here it's shadow, the only direct light coming from the sliver of moon and the stars above, and the air is quiet and still. He doesn't jump when Jo touches a hand to his elbow, because somehow he knew she was coming.

"Hey," she says, soft and tentative as she circles around in front of him. She's standing too close already, but her voice tells him she's testing the water.

John swallows hard and forces half a smile as he says, "Hey yourself."

"What're you doing back here?" she asks, her thumb a maddening slip of movement along his sleeve.

"Breathing," he says. And even though her proximity offers warm reassurance, he takes a step back. "I just… didn't want to deal with all the noise and hustle inside. No one ever comes back here."

"I know," says Jo. Even through the shadows separating them her eyes flash a hint of hurt at his retreat.

They stand there watching each other, _gauging_ each other, and John doesn't know what to say. The quiet rumble of bar patrons inside is counterbalanced by the chirrup of crickets in the surrounding fields, and John watches Jo worry her lower lip between her teeth. It's distracting as hell, so much so that he honestly doesn’t notice she's moving until she's invading his space, and by then it's too late to avoid it when she surges up to kiss him.

He puts a stop to it quickly enough, trying to back further away. He only manages half a step, progress impeded by the wooden support that holds up the roof over the back deck. It doesn't put any appreciable amount of space between them, and she doesn't even have to follow him. She's already sharing his air.

"Why?" she breathes, and her gaze can't seem to decide where on his face to focus. She keeps wavering between his mouth and his eyes. Her lower lip juts out defiantly, and he can tell she's straining to keep her hands at her sides.

But he can't afford to get distracted again, and he can barely hear the words himself when he says, "Because it's not right."

"So fucking _what_?" she says, voice rising with her frustration. "I'm not an idiot, and I'm not some stupid _kid_ that doesn't know what she's asking for." There's something in the way she says it, something in the heavy resolve and barely restrained ire, that drives her point home. And he's wanted to believe it all along, but it's not enough.

"It's not that simple, girl," he says. "I've got two boys of my own out there, and you're younger than both of 'em."

"Barely," she counters, and absurdly enough it makes him laugh.

"That's not really what I'm hung up on here," he murmurs, and he feels his voice slide low and somber when he says, "I should be trying to set you up with one of them. Not chasing you myself." Something else flashes across Jo's face at that, a quick quirk of her eyebrows that he doesn't know how to read, but the look passes quickly.

"You're a good girl, Jo," he says when he sees her protest threaten to spill over. "You deserve better."

Her eyes soften at his words, her expression drifting to something quiet and dangerous—something that looks a whole lot like love—and John feels his breath catch like he's just been sucker punched. He's supposed to have put a stop to this, and suddenly he realizes just how far they _both_ are past too late.

"Isn't that a little presumptuous?" she asks, face bathed in moonlight and shadow. "Telling me what I'm not supposed to feel? Telling me you're not good enough? Don't you think that's my call to make?"

His hand is moving of its own volition, rising to brush her hair aside, and she turns her face to nuzzle into the gesture. Her eyes drift closed, long lashes brushing her cheeks, and John forgets he's supposed to be fighting this.

He's about to move—to kiss her, pull her close, wrap her warmth up in his arms—when the sound of a shotgun cocking freezes him where he stands.

"John Winchester, you step away from my daughter."

He turns his head and finds the shotgun just a few feet away, speckled with the skewed reflection of starlight. There's just enough light to make out the quiet fury on Ellen's face, and he wonders if she can see the guilt behind his eyes as he sidesteps and does as she demands. He steps closer to the gun in the process, putting himself right in line with the barrel.

"Jo, you go inside," says Ellen, and her words are the crackling fury of paper catching fire.

"No!" Jo steps deliberately in front of John instead, shoulders drawn and tense.

"Joanna Beth, we are _not_ discussing this." Ellen's voice is rising, wild and angry.

"Yes. We are. Mom, you can't—"

"I can and I goddamn will, now get your ass inside."

The silence that descends is ragged and staggering, and even the crickets don't dare break in as the Harvelle women stare each other down. It could go on forever, or at least until morning, and John knows this conversation will be ugly enough as it is.

"Jo," he says softly. "I think this one's between your mom and me. You can fight it out with her later."

She turns to lock him with startled eyes, and her expression says she _wants_ to feel betrayed. But his own eyes are wide and honest, and she must see something in them that makes her relent; because a moment later she stands down. She stops at Ellen's side on her way to the door, and her voice is a defiant hiss as she says, "Don't you dare kill him."

"I'm not going to kill him." Ellen's eyes don't leave John. "I'm just going to shoot him." Dissatisfied, but with no other choice, Jo storms back inside, slamming the door behind her.

The silence holds, tense and vibrating as John waits.

"Give me one good reason not to shoot you where you stand," Ellen says.

"I don't have one. You do what you have to."

She considers him darkly for a lengthy stretch, gun never wavering in her hands as she stares him down. She finally sets it aside, a curse rough on her lips. "God _damn_ it, Winchester. You've got _no right_."

"Believe me, I know that."

"Then clearly you have to learn it better."

He can feel the fury projecting off her from where he stands, and even in the darkness can see the frantic edge of energy as she flexes her fingers into fists, over and over again. She's quiet so long that he wonders if she's waiting for something—maybe waiting on him to find the words for a miracle cure, like if he says the right thing it can all go away. But he's got no such words, just a churning uncertainty in his gut and a sudden, desperate need to follow Jo inside.

"This ain't what I meant when I told you to take care of her," Ellen whispers, and it's a harsh sound in the night air.

"Ellen—"

"She's a child!"

"You know she's not." It's the wrong thing to say, even if it's the _only_ thing to say, and she's on him in a heartbeat—grabbing him by the collar and shoving angrily. She knocks him against something hard and unyielding and then draws back; for a second he's sure she's going to punch him in the face, but the moment passes and leaves her tight and still with barely controlled anger.

"I want you to stay away from my daughter," she says, and he's already shaking his head.

"I tried that once," he admits. "She hunted me down and called me names."

Ellen's face remains a cold, disapproving mask as she stares him silently down.

"You _know_ me," he says, desperate to make her understand. Not that it isn't his fault—because it is, it has to be—but that he's done everything he can and then some, and it's done jack squat to keep them from reaching this point.

"I _thought_ I knew you," Ellen whispers. "What do you say, Winchester? You think I should just suck it up and smile? Make like it's okay you're fucking my little girl?"

' _I'm not fucking her_ ,' he wants to say, but he holds his tongue. Because a man's only got so much willpower, and who knows how long the words will be true. Hell, it's not even all that true _now_ , with the lines he's already let himself cross. He already knows what Jo looks like when she falls apart, knows with a desperate intimacy the secret sounds she makes. Arguing that he hasn't fucked her seems like pointless semantics.

"I'm sorry," John whispers, and knows it will never be enough.

Ellen nods jerkily, lip trembling with betrayal and rage, and turns to pick up the shotgun she left propped against the deck. She doesn't have to say that if John hurts her daughter he's dead. The message is plain and clear, and the door slams deafeningly behind her.

John sleeps out in his truck that night, instead of his customary spot in the closet-sized guest room on the second floor.

He knows better than to drive off without Jo the next morning.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

Jo holds her tongue and keeps her distance for the entire duration of their next hunt, but once the monster is a cinder there's nothing to hold her back. A house burns down with their target, so they hit the road that night, driving for a couple of hours just to be sure there's enough distance between them and suspicion. When they finally hit a place to stay, Jo makes sure to hop out before John has even finished putting the truck into park. She's at the check-in desk asking for a room so fast there's nothing John can do but move the car when she comes back out.

She sees his eyes flash with guarded heat when he steps over the threshold into their room and sees a single king-sized bed. She's waiting with her arms crossed, her stomach rough with nerves, and she watches him carefully set his bags aside as the door swings shut behind him. He doesn't approach her.

"Are we still fighting about this?" she asks. Her tone feels flip, but her heart is stuck in an unsteady race as she says, "I thought you were done being an idiot."

He takes a step closer, slow and careful, and doesn't speak.

It's more of a concession than Jo expected, and she deliberately closes the remaining distance between them. John's gaze burns steadily into her with every quick step, and his hands hang stubbornly at his sides even when she stops right in front of him.

"You sure?" he asks, and it's the stupidest question Jo has ever heard. She wants to roll her eyes or grab him by the arms and shake him, but the moment calls for more finesse than that. She settles for letting him see the stubborn determination in her eyes as she tries to convey without words that she's never wanted _anything_ as badly as she wants his hands on her now.

His fingers are gentle when he touches her face, brushing her hair back on both sides, and she closes her eyes as he leans in, feels the warm press of lips on her skin as he drops a soft kiss to her forehead. She cracks her eyes open and finds him leaning close, thumb a whisper of movement across her cheek as he says, "Okay."

It's all the go-ahead she needs, and she kisses him with the eager intensity that's been building up inside her. He doesn't try to gentle the kiss, and his hands slide warm down her back, drawing her flush against him as she slides her arms around his neck.

He lifts her easily off the ground, and she wraps her legs around him, groaning approval at the first hint of his hands sliding up beneath the fabric of her shirt. A few short steps to the bed, and she can't quite believe how softly he lowers her to the mattress.

She writhes deliberately against him, wants him as riled and hungry as she is, and the glimpse she catches when she opens her eyes and finds him watching her says he's all but lost. She bucks and twists, drags him down into another kiss, and her breath feels ragged in her lungs. Her head spins with want, and she needs _more_.

"Easy," John whispers, and suddenly he's drawing back, drawing away which is exactly what Jo _doesn't_ want.

"What?" she gasps, trying to catch her breath and simultaneously decipher his retreat. He hasn't gone far—just enough to prop himself on his arms above her, eyes impossibly bright.

"We don't have to do this now," he says, voice rough in her ears. "Jo, it can wait. We can take it slow."

"Fuck that," she snarls, and gives a rough shove. He's not expecting it, which means he can't fight it, and she follows through to knock him on his back, straddling his legs and quirking an eyebrow pointedly. She's already at work on his belt buckle when she says, "You can stop trying to protect me. I know what I want."

She sees the last, stubborn remnants of his hesitance dissolve at her words, sees his hunger settle into the driver's seat, and his hands are quick and steady on her skin, on her clothes as he pulls and unbuttons and yanks and then shifts her onto her back.

" _Yes_ ," she breathes, feeling hot and desperate for the first real slide of skin on skin, and his mouth is at her throat, his fingers in her hair, and she arches and whimpers and holds tightly on.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

John doesn't even try to quiet the manic whirlwind of his thoughts that night.

There's no sleep to be had, even with the first hint of morning less than six hours off. Jo is a warm weight against his side, her breathing soft and steady and unconscious, and her presence calms him more than it has any right to.

It doesn't stop his thoughts roaming all over the place, and for long, guilty minutes all he can think about is Mary. It feels so much like betrayal to suddenly be fighting for things that aren't revenge. He's still after the demon bastard that took her away, but somewhere along the line his motivation shifted. It's not vengeance driving him now. It's a need to protect his boys, and the world, and the beautiful, stubborn young woman asleep in his arms.

There's still an inky dark void in his heart where Mary's loss lingers—a warm pulse of memory and pain—but he can breathe around it. He can _feel_ again, something besides fear, and his heart gives a startled lurch at the revelation. How long has this been going on?

Jo murmurs something in her sleep, and it's enough to bring him back to the present. Back to thoughts of Ellen and the Roadhouse, his boys and Sam's powers. The looming, awful _something_ —'Apocalypse,' he thinks—that hangs ominous on the horizon.

They know enough now to have an inkling of what's ahead. There's a battle coming. And a generation of psychic children gone either dead or missing wrapped up in it somehow. Sam is the exception. Sam is the _key_ , because he doesn't fit the pattern.

John's got no proof to tell him exactly what it is keeping his son grounded, but it doesn't take an enormous leap of logic to get to Dean. John breathes deep, and silently thanks a god he doesn't quite believe in that his boys have each other.

   
 

He's digging through a stack of newspapers in an Iowa bar when he gets a call from Sam. He leaves the papers where they are and answers on his way out, tossing a twenty on the table to pay for his drink.

"Dad, it's here," says Sam. "It's time. Dean's calling Bobby to start spreading the word."

"What did you see?" John asks, throat dry as he digs for his keys.

"Fire." Sam's voice is tight and tense, low in John's ear. "Get to the Roadhouse. We're a couple days out but we're on our way."

Sam ends the call without explaining further, but as John dials Jo's number it occurs to him that his son probably doesn't know anything more. From what he understands about psychics, visions and prophecy don't tend towards the clear and specific.

"What is it?" Jo asks the second she picks up. He can tell from her voice that she's already on red-alert from the unexpected call.

"Change of plans," says John as he peels impatiently out of the parking lot. "Pack up the gear and check out. I'll be there in ten minutes."

He doesn't explain until they're on the road, and the grim set to her features matches the cold line of tension cutting him through.

"Is my mom okay?" she asks, eyes on the highway ahead.

"Far as I know," he says. "Sam said to meet up at the Roadhouse. He didn't say anything had gone down yet."

John keeps his eyes on the road, but his focus is on Jo as she fidgets in his peripheral vision, and he wishes his truck would eat up the miles faster.

He needs to get to his sons. For the moment, nothing else matters.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

The Winchester boys haven't arrived yet when Jo and John pull up in front of the Roadhouse, but plenty of other hunters have made the trek already. There's an army of vehicles lining the gravel lot, most of them familiar, and the ground crunches beneath her boots as she hops out of the truck.

Barely inside the door, her mom hugs her too tightly before stepping back to fill them in. There's no time for her to so spare so much as a glare at John. Not when bigger things are going on and the world itself hangs precariously on the line.

She ushers them further inside and tells them what she knows. There's a demon amassing an army at the county border, a nasty yellow-eyed bastard that's already taken out one hunter too many.

"Azazel," says John. "His name is Azazel. He's got some clout with other demons."

"It's not just demons he's got," says Ellen, crossing her arms and squaring her shoulders. "Remember those missing psychics? He's got a whole goddamn collection of them in his ranks."

"Fuck," Jo whispers.

"What do we do?" John asks, and Jo wants to reach out and touch him, just to hold on.

"We fight," says Ellen.

Jo swallows past the lump in her throat and wonders if the gun John is carrying will make any goddamn difference. Four bullets aren't enough to take out an army.

   
 

Dean and Sam pull up two days later, and their arrival brings a new tension to the growing ranks of hunters that saturate the Roadhouse. Other people know about Sam now, not that Jo's got any idea how. They know he's psychic and they don't want to trust him, not with a battle building up so big it could mean the end of the world. Logically, Jo can't blame them. If she didn't know him, she'd sure as hell be skeptical of the sole psychic kid claiming to be on their side.

Sam is supposed to be one of _them_ , and no one can explain why he's not.

But Jo is adamant, and Ellen with her: Sam Winchester can be trusted. The Harvelles have enough influence to sway the others, and by the end of the day that newfound tension finally begins to dwindle. Replaced by something resembling hope, because it means they have a psychic of their own. Even surly, dangerous Gordon Walker has to admit they need him.

Jo doesn't interfere when she sees John alone with his boys, but she steps close enough to listen. It's not eavesdropping, exactly. Just a need to know her Winchesters are okay, and she hovers nearby as John says, "I don't want you boys in the middle of this fight."

"Sitting this one out's not really an option, Dad," says Dean, and Jo knows he's right. Nothing John wants or says can change the fact that Sam needs to be on the front lines, and no power in the world will keep Dean behind if he's there.

She finds her way outside a few hours later. Just hoping for a moment of quiet, but she finds Sam and Dean instead. They don't notice her immediately. The sunset has long since tapered away, leaving the yard dark and empty, and maybe they're too wrapped up in each other to pay her any mind. There's just enough ambient light for her to catch sight of the kiss she's interrupting, gentle and softer than she would have expected, and this time she coughs to make her presence known.

Better they know she's here than get caught out be someone else, even if the panicked look on Sam's face is an unfortunate flavor of comical.

"Sorry," she says, and pretends her face isn't burning on a blush. "I just. Needed some air."

"Thanks," says Dean, coughing awkwardly. She watches him grab a flabbergasted Sam by the sleeve and drag him inside, mischief averted for the moment. It leaves her the wide expanse of back yard to herself, and she wanders out into the grass; tilts her head back and back to take in the stars. Adrenaline is a familiar friend now, her head full of questions about the end of the world, and she wonders what the stars will do when there's no humanity left to watch them.

She forces her breathing calm, her mind as blank as she can make it. And when she finally feels centered, she turns and walks back inside. Back to planning strategy and trying to make sure the world doesn't end just yet.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

John keeps his mouth shut on the subject for three days, but in the end he has to try; and when he corners Jo outside, the dark look on her face says she knows exactly what's coming. The sun has just started creeping its way out of sight, and the sphere of privacy is a barely maintained illusion—there's a shanty-town of tents that's grown up, extending into the field around the Roadhouse. The nearest one just fifty feet away.

"Jo—"

"Don't you dare," she hisses, eyes flashing a warning he knows he won't heed.

John knows better than to order her around. But pleading, _that_ he can do, and he takes a step too close for propriety as he says, "I don't want you in that fight."

"John, I have to be there," she insists. Her chin is a stubborn jut of defiance, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. But there's an uncertain tremble in her lip that has nothing to do with fear and _everything_ to do with the open plea he's letting shine in his eyes. He knows he's not going to win this by fighting fair.

He waits her out through an unreadable silence, knowing this isn't an impasse. It's nothing but the inevitable result of the path she's twisted for herself into his heart, and John knows he has to make her see that.

"You can't do this," she finally says, and her voice rises with the words. "You can't tell me to stay out of the fight and then make me watch _you_ walk right into it."

"You're stronger than me."

"No," she bites back. "That's not fair."

"You're right," he says. "It's not. I'm asking anyway."

He could leave it at that. He could leave it at the plea in his voice and his eyes and pray that it's enough, but instead he takes her face in his hands and leans in to tell her with a kiss. He puts everything he has into the touch, chaste press of lips as her eyes flutter closed. When he steps away and drops his hands, she won't even look at him.

"Fine," she says at last, something shattered in the word. "But you better come back. You better not—… Don't you fucking _dare_ die out there."

John knows better than to make any promises, and he watches Jo turn and storm inside, the screen door an angry slam behind her. Despite the hurt he put in her eyes, he feels relieved. It's the first he's been able to breathe in days. He can't keep his sons out of the impending confrontation, but Jo will be as safe as anyone can be.

"Impressive," says a soft voice, and he turns to see Ellen approaching around the corner of the building. He's startled but doesn't show it, didn't realize they had an audience. Sloppy of him, but it's too late to worry about that now.

"I've asked her three times to stay out of that fight," Ellen murmurs. Her eyes are softer than he's seen them since she pulled a shotgun on him from exactly where she's standing now. "Couldn't convince her."

John keeps his mouth shut, because she's not really looking for a response.

"Thank you," she says.

Even though he didn't do it for Ellen, John smiles sadly and nods.

   
 

He passes Sam on his way inside, his son wide-eyed and searching for him.

"What is it?" John asks, setting a reassuring hand on Sam's arm.

"It starts tomorrow," says Sam, and now John can see the vestiges of pain in his son's eyes, the remnants of his vision. "We have to take the fight to them." Sam swallows hard, obviously struggling with some uncertainty, and finally he says, "Dad, I can't see how it's supposed to end."

John gives Sam's arm a light squeeze, gives his son as solid a smile as he can muster. "Then we might just win," he says. His face grows serious as he asks, "Did you tell the others?"

Sam nods vigorously. "Dean and Bobby are filling everyone in. Ellen's making sure all of the water is blessed. We're as ready as we can be."

John knows they are, and he knows it might not be enough. But there's nothing more he can do tonight. The plans are laid, the battle strategies set.

"You and your brother, you make sure you get a good night's sleep," he orders. "Don't stay up all night obsessing over the details, you need to be sharp."

"You, too," says Sam, lip quirking in an exhausted attempt at a smile.

John tightens his fingers one last time before letting his hand drop from Sam's arm, and he feels a solid lump of fear settle low in his gut. He tells himself his boys will come out of this alive, because there's no other way he can bear for it to go, and then he makes his way through the crowded corners of the Roadhouse all the way up to Jo's room.

His knock meets with silence, but he opens the door anyway. As his eyes take in the unfamiliar walls he realizes he's never been in this room before. It looks every sort of wrong, all stuffed animals and floral wallpaper and nothing like the young woman he knows, but he supposes it's been a long time since this room was actually hers.

Jo is moving about at a manic pace, muttering and tidying and every bit as agitated as John supposed he would find her.

"Go away," she barks at him without turning around.

He closes and locks the door behind him and waits for her to slow and finally stop, her back a stubborn, unapproachable wall as she rests her hands on the cracking wood of a low windowsill. Her shoulders are drawn tense, practically vibrating with angry energy, and there's no way she's looking out that window. Not with the blinds drawn closed in front of her.

John approaches cautiously, one step at a time, and doesn't stop until he's standing at her back, barely a breath of space between them. He gives her a moment to retreat or tell him to back off, and when she doesn't, he sets a tentative hand at her waist—waits another beat before sliding it around to her stomach and using the leverage to pull her against him.

"You really want me gone?" he asks, voice held careful and soft against the shell of her ear.

The tense line of her back holds taut and silent as the seconds stretch into minutes, but he doesn't back off and Jo doesn't push him away. They stand there like that, both of them wound tight enough to shatter, until finally Jo's shoulders sag, her head dropping back against his shoulder so she can turn her face into the crook of his neck.

"No," she whispers. "No, I want you to stay for fucking ever. Can you do that?" She sets one hand warm and reassuring over his own, and the touch is a green light that sets him into motion. He turns her so he can wrap her in a proper hug, his arms all but enveloping her tiny frame as she lets him press her close, her breath warm and unsteady against his throat.

"I can try," he whispers.

He undresses her with gentle reverence, feels the minute shaking in her hands as her fingers undo his buttons one at a time, and he watches her face as he lowers her to the small bed in the corner. Her legs are warm against his sides, the heels of her feet digging tightly into his back, and he breathes a gasp into her skin at the welcome heat of her body when he slips inside.

He kisses her deeply as he begins to move, and pretends it doesn't feel like goodbye.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

It might be the hardest thing Jo has ever done, watching John Winchester pack up the Colt the next morning and climb into his truck with his boys. The hunters who plan to fight are heading out en masse, piling into a well-organized arrangement of drivers and vehicles to take the fight to the demons. To keep the demons away from the Roadhouse, Jo thinks, but Sam had insisted it was necessary.

Within an hour the Roadhouse is disconcertingly quiet, both indoors and out. It's startling after nearly a week of noise and people and busy preparation. There are more than twenty of them staying behind, ready and waiting, and the silence is all terrified tension waiting for release.

"Okay, people," Ellen breaks into it, voice forceful and bright. "Let's get this place set up. Every cot and quilt and sleeping bag we've got. We'll have wounded to tend to soon enough."

Jo tries to focus every ounce of her attention into the necessary menial tasks, because thinking only makes her blood heat with panic. Better to stay numb until it's over, and that's what she resolves to do.

Around noon there's nothing left to do besides wait, and Jo makes her way to the front door. Most of the others are already there, staring off at the horizon.

Jo realizes with a jolt that the sky is burning, dark and red and angry, and she takes her mother's hand. All they can do is watch.

The wounded start trickling in soon enough, driven in by cars and trucks that turn around to drive right back out again, and Jo feels a numb relief at being able to do something useful. With an identifiable purpose she can direct her attention somewhere besides the smoldering red fury of the sky, and she helps carry and stitch and medicate from one hour into the next. They save some, lose more, and the Roadhouse is noisy again with calls of "This one!" and "I need more gauze" and the murmuring of last rites.

Gordon Walker bleeds out all over her, too late and too deep a wound, and she washes her hands at the pump outside.

"Hey," says Ellen in a fleeting moment of respite. "Come here."

It's easy to follow directions, and Jo lets herself be held in a hug that's too scared to be reassuring.

"We're gonna make it through this," says Ellen.

"I know," says Jo, even though she really doesn't.

"I am so goddamn proud of you," her mom whispers, and then the roar of approaching engines announces more injured and more work to do.

Bobby brings Dean in sometime after sundown—the sky isn't dark enough, too busy glowing angry red from the direction of the battle—and Dean is delirious with blood loss, already insisting that he has to get back out there.

"Just stitch me up and send me back," he says, trying to stand and only failing because Bobby is there to help impede his efforts.

"Like hell," Jo snarls, ready to start sewing him up as soon as he holds goddamn still.

Ellen approaches with a glass of water and holds it to Dean's lips, says, "Drink this. It'll get your strength back up."

Dean's apparently out of it enough not to question, and he downs the glass with some assistance. He's out in moments, the water spiked with something good and strong, and Jo's hands are steady as she works.

"Bobby," she says, when she's got the wound closed and the man is standing to leave. "Are we winning?"

Bobby's eyes are bright and pained, his mouth a thin, worried line. "Not last I saw."

"Is…" Jo has to swallow to finish the question. "Is John alive?"

"I'm sorry, girl," says Bobby. "I just don't know."

   
 

The sky continues to burn all the way through the night, but when sunrise meets a smoky blue horizon the world still hasn't ended. No one dares to say a word until they know for sure, too many ways they could be wrong, and still they wait until the troops start coming home.

Hunters pour back in, ragged and chaotic. Seems like everyone is hurt and limping, bleeding or concussed or broken-limbed. Jo wants to stand at the porch and watch for John's truck among the returning vehicles, but as long as people still need help it's not an option.

No one's quite clear on _how_ they won, but they all agree on one thing. It came down to Sam Winchester.

The clearest she gets is from a loopy guy named Kubrik—might be concussed or he might just be loony, and Jo doesn't care which so long as his information is good.

"His brother went down and the guy just _lost_ it," Kubrik says. "I've never seen anything like it." She asks about John, but his answer is the same as everyone else's: he just doesn't know.

There are unfamiliar faces among the survivors. Possession victims from the other side, Jo learns. She can see the burned-out, hollow looks in their eyes, and part of her wonders if they might have been better off dead. She banishes the thought and curses her cynicism. As long as they're alive they have a place to start, and what the hell has everyone been fighting for if not to try and save the likes of these unfortunates?

The slam of a car door outside is followed by silence so sudden that Jo feels it in her bones. It's silly to think the slam is familiar—one vehicle sounds the same as any other—but somehow she knows. She's on her feet in a heartbeat, hurried steps carrying her out onto the front porch to the sight of John's truck.

All she's got is a skewed view of the driver's side door as Sam climbs out of it, Colt in hand. He looks singed but steady on his feet.

Jo knew that Dean was back on his feet, but she's still startled by the speed with which he's suddenly just _there_ , tearing past Jo straight to his brother. Every eye is on the Winchester boys as they hold onto each other like life itself is at stake.

Every eye except Jo's, because she's helpless to do anything but stare at that truck. She's waiting, stuck in an agonizing limbo that leaves her empty and breathless and balanced on a dangerous edge. She tells herself John _can't_ be dead, but she just doesn't know.

Her heart stutters to life in her chest at the slam of the door from the far side of the vehicle, and when John moves into view she remembers how to breathe. The side of his face is bloody, but he moves with quick, steady steps. Jo suddenly needs to touch him, because it's the only way she can be sure he's really there.

She takes the yard at a run and launches herself into his arms, completely unapologetic and only realizing belatedly that it might be a bad idea. Who knows if he's as uninjured as he looks? But he catches her easily, and she wraps her arms and legs around him, buries her face in his shoulder and holds on tight.

"Never do that to me again," she whispers, and then she's kissing him. His hair is sticky when she slides her fingers through it, his lips slick with the blood his face is wearing, and she doesn't care. She doesn't care about goddamn any of it, because John is alive and warm and kissing her back.

It's John who pulls away first, a sheepish grin on his face as he sets her down. Jo suddenly thinks to blush as she finally notices the heavy weight of dozens of eyes watching from all directions. Their audience finds other places to look when she turns around, but not nearly fast enough.

Ellen alone continues to watch from the porch. Her eyes are unreadable from this distance, but Jo imagines they're probably stuck somewhere between sadness and relief. Their gazes lock for an odd moment until Ellen finally turns to go inside, healing duties still to be tended to.

Sam and Dean are nowhere to be seen, and Jo supposes if nothing else the spectacle gave them a chance for a clean escape.

There's still a mountain of chaos to settle. Splints to set and stitches to sew, too many dead and all of them deserving a proper burial. Jo desperately wants to know what happened, but curiosity and questions will have to wait.

John's hand closes around hers, and she smiles at him as she leads him home.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

  


  


**Epilogue**  


Three days after the world doesn't end, the Roadhouse finally starts clearing out. The dead have been seen to, the living tended, and hunters and victims alike start finding their way back into the world.

Dean Winchester doesn't want to stay a day longer than necessary, and he doesn't even have to look at Sam to know his brother feels the same. Now that they're not needed here, he just wants to be elsewhere. Somewhere he can touch Sam the way he needs to but hasn't since they pulled in. Somewhere he doesn't constantly have to remind his brother to stop the wandering hands or keep it in his pants, for fear of their secret getting out. He's crawling out of his skin with the difficult task of restraint, and it tastes like pure relief to know they can finally get out.

He checks in with his dad first, a quick exchange and a hug, and a promise to meet up again soon. Just as soon as John can extricate himself from the Roadhouse, which could still be weeks since he has to wait on Jo.

"I'm sure she can do without you for a few days," Dean says, and it's half invitation, half joke. Dean can't believe he's _teasing_ his father, especially about this.

John smiles and shakes his head, says, "She would kill me," and hugs Dean again.

Sam waves goodbye to the small crowd on the porch as Dean turns the Impala out of the lot—Bobby and Ellen and John—and once they're out of sight, Sam stretches his arm across the seat to brush a hand across the back of Dean's neck.

"Yeah," says Dean. "I missed you, too." Even though Sam's barely been out of his line of sight.

"Where we headed?" Sam asks, his thumb playing back and forth across the skin just above Dean's collar.

"Haven't decided yet." Dean leans into the touch. "Somewhere not so full of hunters, for one thing."

"Somewhere I can fuck you?" Sam murmurs, and the familiar low rumble of his voice sends shivers up Dean's spine.

"Yeah," Dean says, then coughs to try and steady his voice. "Yeah, I'd call that a priority. But cool it for now, okay?" Because it will be hours before they're far enough away for that to be a good idea, and if Sam keeps talking like that—keeps tempting him with such light, easy touches—Dean's going to pull over and climb on top of him right here. Broad daylight and anyone in the world welcome to stumble across them.

Sam pulls his hand obediently away, and Dean reminds himself that the loss is temporary. All he needs now is a distraction.

"So what next?" Sam asks into the rumbling quiet of the vehicle.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean… the demon is dead. We saved the world. What now?"

Dean is surprised at the question. He's never really thought about it.

"I figured we'd find another hunt," he says. "Why? What do _you_ want to do now?"

Sam shrugs, too casual for the gesture to be real, and he says, "I thought maybe we could take a break. Find something else to do for awhile. There's more to life than hunting, you know?"

Dean watches the sun-bleached landscape as he rolls the idea over in his head. It's a completely foreign concept, the idea that there's more to life than family and hunting, and he has no idea what Sam means when he says 'something else.' But the idea's not repugnant, and Dean can hear in Sam's voice how badly his brother wants this. He thinks back to Sam's senior year of high school, to his brother's aborted announcement that he was leaving for Stanford in the fall. He thinks about how badly Sam had wanted that, and how quickly his brother had set it all aside when Dean asked him to stay—when Sam cried and kissed him, and Dean had kissed right back.

"Sure," he finally agrees. "We could try something else for awhile." It's not a guaranty. Dean knows better than that. But it's a compromise.

In his peripheral vision Dean catches the wide grin that splits across Sam's face—the relief in his smile that says it was more than he expected.

"Great," says Sam. "Okay. Good."

There's an easy silence between them for twenty minutes or so, the blurry roadside speeding by, and Dean briefly considers popping a tape in. He rejects the idea out of hand, too content with the soft pace of Sam's breath and the contented roar of his baby's engine.

"Did Dad tell you what he's planning to do now?" Sam asks seven miles later, and Dean snorts.

"What do you _think_ he's gonna do?" Dean asks, gentle taunt in his voice, because even the tone of Sam's question acknowledges the foregone conclusion. Of course their father will keep hunting.

"He taking Jo with him?"

"Damn straight he is," says Dean. He doesn't bother mentioning that John refused to leave the Roadhouse without her.

"You think they're okay?" Sam asks, and Dean nods immediately. Confident. Even if he doesn't know Jo the way he knows his dad, the John he hugged goodbye this morning isn't just okay. He's more alive than Dean has seen him in years.

"Yeah," says Dean, a small smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah, I _really_ think they are."

The miles are comfortable and easy as they drive through the day, and nightfall finds them at a nicer motel than usual. Dean falls asleep, tired and sated and—for the first time in his life—confident that his family is happy and safe.

 

— | | — | | — | | — | | —

  


Now you got no reason to trust me  
My confidence is a little rusty  
But if you don't feel like bein' alone  
Baby, I could walk you all the way home

~ Bruce Springsteen,  
 _All the Way Home_


End file.
